Immutables are cool—I’ve been running Silverblue for over half a year now. However, this seems half baked?
Unless I’ve misunderstood, you can no longer use pacman (without losing your changes after the next update).
And arkdep itself is just a shell script without any tests or continuous integration. I would be skeptical of using such a tool to control the integrity of my system.
it’s a manjaro project, ofc it’s half baked
It’s half baked: like the post says, it’s the first testing version. It will be developed more, like a member of the team said:
Our plan is definitely for it to become an official variant of Manjaro. With the community testing version we’re now gathering some feedback on what people expect from such a variant and what should still go in there or what could be slimmed down.
It’s clearly not ready.
It kinda feels like it goes against what Manjaro was supposed to be though. A safer version of Arch but with about the same features, including its massive software pool to pull from - and that exactly is what would fall flat in this case, since you’d need very selectively maintained “packages”, which would be extremely limited in comparison to someone with access to regular repos and the AUR.
I don’t know how Manjaro plans to do it, but Universal Blue distros have access to the entire set of
dnfrepositories, including non-free packages. You runrpm-ostree install, and it layers the package you want. Each system update re-layers the custom package layer after upgrading the system layer.But since this is pre-alphaware, it’s kind of early to be passing judgement on how/if they’ll have access to the AUR and whether you could layer packages. Seems like the “safety” aspect is served through having an immutable system, which ensures end users have the same base as everyone else.
And it’s fine if that’s not your cup of tea. Sounds like it’s not. Arch, openSUSE, Debian, and their mutable descendants aren’t going anywhere.
I don’t know for the AUR, but the regular repos seem to be already accessible. You can try them with pacman, but the installed packages will be deleted at the moment of the update, or you can create a custom image and add the wanted packages which will be reinstalled at every update.
I don’t understand the hype of immutables, or usability even. I tried Bazzite today after Nobara nuked itself, and I couldn’t even paste my old Firefox profile since the actual folder apparently sits within the immutable folder structure. Maybe that’s fine for grandmas who just want to casually browse the internet but this seems extremely counter intuitive and an incredible hassle. I didn’t even have time to reach the software limitations with how fast I tried the next distro. Still hopping though, because apparently Fedora just nukes itself when you try to install codecs and I think I have about every major distro tested by now. Linux is cursed.
This is wrong. I run Bazzite and have transfered my FF profile over without issue. The Ublue “distros” just use the FF flatpak. You can follow the same instructions as you would on any other distro to move your FF profile with the flatpak version.
I haven’t had any problems with Bazzite, either, save for figuring out how to install Private Internet Access’s client, but that’s not immutable distros’ fault. The fault lies with PIA for not packaging their client in a sane way.
I couldn’t find jack shit, other than posts where people were saying that it sits within the immutable part of the distro and the profile manager just opened some temporary profile folder, with the permanent path being invalid / nonexistent. If that information is wrong then they should work at least on their documentation, which I checked for FF profiles and could find 0 entries.
I could probably summarize your experience as “skill issue”.
I don’t understand the hype of immutables, or usability even.
I suppose this article/blogpost by Lennart Poettering should suffice. Though, this article/blogpost by Colin Walters is also cool.
I tried Bazzite today after Nobara nuked itself, and I couldn’t even paste my old Firefox profile since the actual folder apparently sits within the immutable folder structure.
This is simply false as pointed out by others already.
I didn’t even have time to reach the software limitations with how fast I tried the next distro.
You will have a very hard time on Linux with that mindset. And, to be honest, literally any OS you aren’t already familiar with.
Still hopping though, because apparently Fedora just nukes itself when you try to install codecs
I wouldn’t be surprised if you just searched this through your favorite search engine and settled with whatever random solution you came across instead of relying upon RPM Fusion’s documentation on the matter.
and I think I have about every major distro tested by now.
While this could be true, I wonder what prevented you from sticking with any one of them.
Linux is cursed.
It’s definitely a lot harder if you’ve got major skill issues.
I could probably summarize your experience as “skill issue”.
Blaming users for a lack of proper UX is always the best excuse.
This is simply false as pointed out by others already.
Yet the only information I could find by other users of the distro. I even checked the official documentation, which contained 0 information on Firefox profiles. The FF profile manager only led to temporary folders and the absolute path led to an inexistent / invalid one (the one you’d expect them to go normally). So yes, I guess my skills are low, but so is the possibility for me to even learn anything when the only barely scrapped info I could find is wrong.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you just searched this through your favorite search engine and settled with whatever random solution you came across instead of relying upon RPM Fusion’s documentation on the matter.
No, that and the rpm fusion install page is quite literally exactly what I used. Then no applications would launch, no UI functions would work and after I hard reset the PC it wouldn’t show me anything but a broken welcome page, which, when closed, left me with a blank black screen and my mouse cursor. I’m not sure what else you would expect me to do when following seemingly official command guidelines. But I guess it’s still my fault after all.
While this could be true, I wonder what prevented you from sticking with any one of them.
Let’s see…
- Manjaro: Lots of criticism from others, ironically ran 2 years without major issues. But I wanted to switch to btrfs and EOS was hyped up to be a better version of a simple Arch installation.
- EndeavourOS: An update nuked the bootloader after a few months. Could not figure out how to fix it since “guides” were using non encrypted devices as an example and were expecting user knowledge already. Tried asking for help in the official forums and got gaslit and insulted by users instead to the point where the mods had to close and hide the thread, suggesting I make a new one if I still need help. I decided it was better to leave that toxic cesspool & distro.
- OpenSUSE: Installation failed to create partitions. When I eventually got past the issue and got it installed I could not switch resolution down to 1080p because it would just turn my screen into a stretched pancake mode. Could neither find a solution or any information as to why it cannot do something as basic as this, so moved on.
- Nobara: Nuked its Plasma setup, leaving you with a blank screen and the broken crash reporter. Could not find any information anywhere on it so I tried using Timeshift via rescue terminal and it would just error out because it failed to mount boot partitions or whatever. Used a live usb environment and ran GUI Timeshift, mounted the snapshot partition and restored the last snapshot that way, seemingly without an error. But on a reboot it then became unbootable with even more errors about the partitions. Again, no matching threads I could find that would be able to help me.
- Bazzite we already covered came after.
- Fedora: Since many people said most of my issues come from using a fork of a private guy I was expecting major polish. But as already covered they don’t have an easy way to enable the most basic multimedia playback and their official how-to broke the system.
It’s definitely a lot harder if you’ve got major skill issues.
Especially since absolutely no one is willing to help and rather throws insults and personal attacks around when facing people who struggle with all the major bugs.
Manjaro: Lots of criticism from others, ironically ran 2 years without major issues. But I wanted to switch to btrfs and EOS was hyped up to be a better version of a simple Arch installation.
I had a similar story, in fact EOS has a problem that they use dracut by default and is set to overwrite the kernel parameters every time you update the system lol.
I’m very sorry you had to deal with some users from here btw, specially the nixos people.
And people thought Arch users were stupidly entitled and toxic. My favorite part right now is him trying to repeatedly berate me for not being able to read out the correct profile folder within Firefox (which shows the default .mozilla/firefox/), even though I already mentioned that it does not show the actually correct one (.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox/). I guess he has “skill issues”.
Skill issue. I use NixOS btw. You can manage your dot files the immutable way as well if you develop the skills rather than yelling from your horse and buggy at the model T passing you.
Same reply that I wrote to the other entitled asshole: https://fedia.io/m/linux@programming.dev/t/1045299/Manjaro-Immutable-Out-Now-for-Community-Testing/comment/6595387#entry-comment-6595387
So you think immutable distros aren’t the future of Linux? I’ve got some bad news for you: This style of distribution is catching on like wildfire and IMO someday they’ll almost all be structured like this and you’ll actually have to learn how to work with it.
I’m not sure how what I said is entitled. I’m a REALLY mediocre programmer with limited time to learn and I STILL learned Nix and work comfortably with immutable distros.
SKILL ISSUE
If you make your distros even more unintuitive and a hassle than before, then no, it certainly won’t be the future. You people need a reality check.
It’s really not unintuitive, honestly. It is just very different than FHS.
You people need a reality check.
“You people”?
If many things go from 1-2 steps to 20+ steps that I also have to read up on, but aren’t even documented anywhere which means I also have to be some sort of all knowing mystic (meaning they might as well be not possible to do), then yes, that’s very much unintuitive.
Maybe you “forward-thinking generation of software engineers that make elegant, reliable, declarative systems but are totally not entitled shitheads that insult everyone who clearly struggle with such elegancy” should actually listen to the issues that your potential user base is facing instead of dismissing them. Otherwise it will be hard to sell that “future” to them.
Is Manjaro still a thing? I feel like they should’ve died long ago.
Should’ve or should have
Sorry, that’s one of my pet peeves lol
Shooda
“Should’ve” is just the contraction for “should have”
Yes, I’m aware of that.
Nice
Oh that’s a fun idea! I may try it.
