this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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Is there a distro with:

  • Immutable root
  • Active work (examples) toward reproducible packages
  • A smaller learning curve than NixOS?
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Could openSUSE MicroOS check the boxes for you?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@bahmanm @usb_see Is openSUSE MicroOS out of beta and ready for productive use? Haven’t read any news about it lately (I am on openSUSE Leap, so interested)

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

I'm not using it myself as am on Tumbelweed but I do know it's quite similar to the idea OP is talking about. Oh and I couldn't find any references to it being beta on the website 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Take a look at the GNU Guix System. It's similar to NixOS, but maybe their configuration language will be easier.

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

This. The nix language makes anything bigger harder. A big nix config is just hard to wrangle.

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

NixOS is style over substance, there is absolutely 0 reason to come with a whole new language for this and Guix is proof of that.

NixOS' entire project is like this, they make things harder for no other reason than "it looks cooler this way".

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

Tried NixOS. As a nonprogrammer, trying to have what I wanted was frustrating. There's no clear documentation on anything, because everything is experimental. Went back to Arch but will try Guix

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Don't get me wrong Guix is hard too, you'll have to package things yourself, or use flatpak, or use distrobox or maybe nix itself just to get all the things you need. BUT if you can grasp the language and packaging guidelines, it's much more clearly laid out. The CLI tools are clearer, the methods are too. It's not this confusing split mess that seems to be with NixOS. And there is still not a clear plasma desktop. But I'm trying to fix that perhaps. 😁

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

NixOS learning curve maybe is not so hard. You can start with default configurations and installed Calamares what is as simple as on other distros. Than look for options and try.

Otherwise, Flatpaks are reproducible (build with flatpak-builder as on Flathub).

[–] cybersandwich 8 points 1 year ago

I just installed NixOS on an old laptop. It's really easy to start but the documentation sucks and there aren't many great tutorials.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Universal Blue has a make your own even:

I still run off Kinoite 38 -Main/Latest on my AMD card.

Can use Nix even if you like with extra steps:

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

I like this custom image idea.

Fleek hasn't worked for me in Ubuntu land but once I move to a reproducible environment 🤞

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

Vanilla OS and Blend OS are also immutable with atomic upgrades and has distrobox if you want packages from different distros.

[–] Raphael 0 points 1 year ago

Only Silverblue but sadly it's Fedora which is owned by Red Hat.

I was on Silverblue but I'm on Debian now with the same workflow, minimal kde-plasma-packages install with everything as flatpaks.