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Am I overthinking it?
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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Atomic systems or rpm-ostree is an interesting concept and may well be the future of distributing linux, but it has a lot of compromises. It may not be the first place to start when leaving windows.
The problem is all the apps and things you may wish to do with your OS. Flatpak is the preferred method of installing apps as it doesn't interfere with the OS, but that is a compromise that means more overhead for running apps including memory and disk space, and less integration with the host OS than traditional apps.
You can overlay native apps but the more you overlay onto the immutable os, the more complex upgrading gets and the risks of breaking stuff.
I'm not sure I would be starting with an immutable OS when switching away from windows. While it has a lot of theoretical benefits, its a work in progress and with significant compromises at the moment. Your VPN may just be the first of many programmes you find you need to overlay.
I personally would look at a more traditional install, get it working how you like and if you find Linux works as a permanent home then think about how you might recreate that with an immutable OS base. If your needs a re very simple then maybe it'll be easy, but if you're using lots of software and tools (particularly if its not available Flatpak) or custom OS config you may find atomic desktops are not yet quite ready for you.
It could be frustrating and off putting if you try linux immutable, find loads of problems and attribute that to linux when its actually the immutable OS that's the cause.
I currently run Bazzite full time on an HTPC laptop, but I don't use that for work purposes at all. It's been great, and I would be a little sad if I couldn't fit Bazzite into my use case.
But I'm fully aware that my frustrations are atomic problems, and I've had no issues installing the software I need on non-atomic distros. The reason I'm so smitten by atomic distros is the fact that there's theoretically no down time. I've had distros break in the past due to some squirrely install or update, and I've never once had that issue on Bazzite.
I just recently learned that openSUSE users also have a lot of stability due to btrfs snapshots, so maybe that's really the feature I'm looking for. I don't know much about it, honestly.
Are these frustrations solved by layering with
rpm-ostree? If so, just go with it. I've always layered over a dozen or so packages and it has worked out fine; it's defaulted to automatic upgrades in the background, so you don't feel much of it anyways.I love openSUSE and what they do with Btrfs snapshots and Snapper.
However, in terms of 'robustness' and 'stability', I don't think anything currently out there can hold up to Fedora Atomic, Guix System and NixOS. This is just by design; the leap from traditional to atomic, then reproducible and finally declarative ensures that issues related to hidden/unknown state, accumulation of cruft, bitrot, configuration drift are left behind in the past. If Btrfs snapshots + Snapper would have been sufficient, then openSUSE themselves would never have desired the creation of openSUSE MicroOS (i.e. their attempt at an 'immutable' distro) in the first place.
An excellent point.
But to your earlier one, I can get the VPN client working outside of a container. There's even an RPM file from the vendor, so installing it is just as easy as installing any other package.
I appreciate the input!
Aight. You know what you ought to do then 😉.
It has been my pleasure!