Hey everyone! I've been using Linux for around 20 years, mainly for office tasks and some light photography and video editing. I'm curious about whether an immutable distribution would be a good fit for my work PC, especially now that I'll be sharing it with family members who are studying. What do you think about the usability of immutable distros for this kind of setup, and which ones would be the best in terms of available software packages? Thanks!
5 Answers
You might want to check out the distro selection page in our wiki for some guidance. Just remember to take regular backups and test things in a VM first. Make sure to understand every command before hitting Enter!
I had some good experiences with getaurora.dev. I initially tried Fedora Kionite, but the Nvidia drivers were a hassle for me. If you don’t need heavy graphics, that might be worth a shot, though!
I've used Bazzite and Fedora Silverblue for regular work tasks, and I've found them pretty straightforward. Switching to an immutable setup didn't take too long, and I even picked up some new tools along the way. Overall, using Distobox has been easy to learn too.
Using an immutable distro really relies on whether your work software has Flatpak or AppImage versions. If you need to install via traditional packages, that might mess with the setup. It's also about whether you’re okay trading some customization for stability and if you trust your family members not to mess things up. I haven't tried too many immutable distros, but looking into the Fedora options might be a good start!
I've been checking out Fedora Silverblue and Bluefin, and the architecture is pretty simple. It mainly uses Flatpak, which is great, but I wouldn't consider them for production just yet. I'm looking forward to Ubuntu Core Desktop when it's ready since it will be fully containerized, but for now, either Silverblue or Bluefin could work well for your family situation. I think you’d be fine with either of those!
I actually don't have any graphic card but use Intel integrated drivers, so that could work out well for me!