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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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Go on and keep using your distro another few years, and you'll recognize the patterns of what keeps breaking. And then try some others for some years, and you'll find that you can at most pick between smaller issues on a regular base on rolling ones, or larger batches of issues on release based ones. And some point you'll find that every user creating a custom mix of packages that are all interdependent on another is quite the mess, and the number of package combinations times the number of configuration option combinations is so large that you can guarantee some of them will have issues. On top you have package managers rumaging around in the system while it is in use, and with a mix of old code that is still loaded in ram and new code on disk behaviour for these transients is basically undefinded. Ultimately you'll grow tired of this scheme at some point, and then running a byte-to-byte copy of something that has been tested and doing atomic updates is quite attractive. And putting a stronger focus on containerized applications not only enables immutable distros for broad adoption in the first place, but also cuts down the combinatorial complexity of the OS. And lastly, to be honest, after so many years of the same kinds of issues over and over again, the advent of immutable+atomic distros + containerized desktop apps brought a couple of new challenges that are more interesting for the time being..