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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What's up with all these immutable distributions? What are the benefits and disadvantages of them? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For once I feel a little out of touch after I took a bit of a break from following the news to focus on studying, and suddenly everyone is talking about immutable distributions. What are they exactly? What are the benefits and the disadvantages of immutable systems?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Honestly every time I mention NixOS I get someone telling me it's not a beginner friendly distro

Provided you get to understand the config file which only took a day of fiddling it's so much easier to use than mutable distros

I add something to my package list and it just works, and nothing else breaks and even if I do manage to screw up my entire system so badly that I can't boot it anymore I just boot the last working configuration and undo my changes

I believe people have even built UIs around the config to make it more user friendly

https://github.com/nix-gui/nix-gui https://github.com/vlinkz/nix-software-center

[–] Aties 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree, when I was on other distributions I would gradually customize things until something broken; then it was easier to start from scratch than to fix my mistakes. With NixOS it still gives me the ability to tinker with things, but makes it much easier than starting from scratch when I inevitably mess it up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I find it's better than that, don't even need to start from scratch because it's so difficult to break it to the point you can't just revert to a previous version