Huh, I wonder why I thought it was immutable.

Bazzite felt like a hassle at first, but it was really just about learning some new things and once I did, I really like it. Just use flatpaks for everything that you can. Otherwise, "rpm-ostree" does almost everything else you might need (and "ujust" makes it even easier). Read the man page on that and you should be good.

As someone who did too much tinkering on EOS (time shift was a god send), the ability to not have to worry about breaking anything is very comforting.

Breaking shit and fixing it is how I learned how to use Linux in general, but that doesn't mean I don't want to avoid having to do it if I can.