Immutable Linux desktop with OpenSUSE and Snaps • Hacker News Board

Re: Immutable Linux desktop with OpenSUSE and Snaps

#21

Post by siraben » Tue, Mar 16, 2021, 1:06 PM UTC

jcastro wrote: post #20

siraben wrote: post #14

> I can't believe this worked. Sure, you won't be deploying this in production, but we mostly survived this long with unconfined apps and having transactional updates is an improvement The resulting system still seems very mutable to me, since it appears the system configuration management isn't tracked in a transactional manner. I would think for a "immutable Linux desktop", NixOS would be what the author was lookin…

Blog author here, indeed I like NixOS, but I don't have the time to generate an entire nix file for a working desktop. I have some friends that do it and that's great, but there's no "Get you 90% there" installation option afaict. I just don't have the time for that. That being said I use nix on my systems, just as a package manager to some existing boxes.

The default configuration.nix created by the NixOS installer[0] is a KDE environment already, and it's relatively simple to expand and iterate your system configuration (no restart required!). Personally for me the hardest part was figuring out partitioning (since I rarely do that), but YMMV. Hope you try it sometime!

[0] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/77297a7519b3d968f32abd...

Re: Immutable Linux desktop with OpenSUSE and Snaps

#22

Post by jcastro » Tue, Mar 16, 2021, 1:12 PM UTC

siraben wrote: post #21

jcastro wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blog author here, indeed I like NixOS, but I don't have the time to generate an entire nix file for a working desktop. I have some friends that do it and that's great, but there's no "Get you 90% there" installation option afaict. I just don't have the time for that. That being said I use nix on my systems, just as a package manager to some existing boxes.

The default configuration.nix created by the NixOS installer[0] is a KDE environment already, and it's relatively simple to expand and iterate your system configuration (no restart required!). Personally for me the hardest part was figuring out partitioning (since I rarely do that), but YMMV. Hope you try it sometime! [0] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/77297a7519b3d968f32abd...

Yeah, I would love to see a repo with more example configs, for example "This one looks like Ubuntu, this one is more XFCE focused, here's a tiling wm one." and so on.

Re: Immutable Linux desktop with OpenSUSE and Snaps

#23

Post by jcastro » Tue, Mar 16, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

elitistphoenix wrote: post #2

You had me at immutable but you lost me at snaps

Blog author here, by default MicroOS comes with flatpaks so you can just use that as you want.

You can use either one you want but keep the same base OS, as far as I can tell openSUSE is the only immutable distro that lets you do that, which I think is pretty cool.

Re: Immutable Linux desktop with OpenSUSE and Snaps

#24

Post by pknopf » Tue, Mar 16, 2021, 1:56 PM UTC

siraben wrote: post #14

> I can't believe this worked. Sure, you won't be deploying this in production, but we mostly survived this long with unconfined apps and having transactional updates is an improvement The resulting system still seems very mutable to me, since it appears the system configuration management isn't tracked in a transactional manner. I would think for a "immutable Linux desktop", NixOS would be what the author was lookin…

Checkout my pet project, Darch: https://godarch.com/

It is truly immutable. Here are my recipes: https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch-recipes

Re: Immutable Linux desktop with OpenSUSE and Snaps

#25

Post by pknopf » Tue, Mar 16, 2021, 1:57 PM UTC

jcastro wrote: post #20

siraben wrote: post #14

> I can't believe this worked. Sure, you won't be deploying this in production, but we mostly survived this long with unconfined apps and having transactional updates is an improvement The resulting system still seems very mutable to me, since it appears the system configuration management isn't tracked in a transactional manner. I would think for a "immutable Linux desktop", NixOS would be what the author was lookin…

Blog author here, indeed I like NixOS, but I don't have the time to generate an entire nix file for a working desktop. I have some friends that do it and that's great, but there's no "Get you 90% there" installation option afaict. I just don't have the time for that. That being said I use nix on my systems, just as a package manager to some existing boxes.

If you are more comfortable with apt/Ubuntu/Debian, you could use Darch: https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch-recipes

There are also base images for Arch and Void.

Re: Immutable Linux desktop with OpenSUSE and Snaps

#26

Post by moistbar » Tue, Mar 16, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

jcastro wrote: post #23

elitistphoenix wrote: post #2

You had me at immutable but you lost me at snaps

Blog author here, by default MicroOS comes with flatpaks so you can just use that as you want. You can use either one you want but keep the same base OS, as far as I can tell openSUSE is the only immutable distro that lets you do that, which I think is pretty cool.

I'm pretty sure Silverblue lets you install snapd as well.

Re: Immutable Linux desktop with OpenSUSE and Snaps

#27

Post by moistbar » Tue, Mar 16, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

BruiseLee wrote: post #17

curt15 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Once they introduced "classically confined" snaps (that is, snaps that have no confinement and exposed the real filesystem hierarchy to them) If there is no confinement, what advantages do "classically confined" snaps offer over AppImages?

Forced updates.

Or a centralized update mechanism at all. As I understand it, Appimage doesn't offer such a feature.

Re: Immutable Linux desktop with OpenSUSE and Snaps

#28

Post by e3bc54b2 » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 7:13 AM UTC

exdsq wrote: post #12

e3bc54b2 wrote: post #11

Why was NixOS/GuixSD considered for this? It has immutable system and is fully declarative on top. Snaps OTOH just seem like a way tk shoehorn proprietary packages onto open source ecosystem (not to mention snap store itself is proprietory, and cannot be swapped for some other snap store)

I've used NixOS before (I still have a server at home running it) but haven't tried GuixSD. Do you recommend it?

I have not used GuixSD, but I peek evey now and then on its progress.

Like the sibling comment says, it has less warts than Nix and Nix language, but depending on your stance on Free software, you may need nonfree repo.

Additionally, NixOS has far more mindshare and manpower and has a vast repository, something to keep in m mind if you ever want some exotic piece, Nixpkgs has higher chance of having it already packaged.