Look, I’ve only been a Linux user for a couple of years, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that we’re not afraid to tinker. Most of us came from Windows or macOS at some point, ditching the mainstream for better control, privacy, or just to escape the corporate BS. We’re the people who choose the harder path when we think it’s worth it.
Which is why I find it so damn interesting that atomic distros haven’t caught on more. The landscape is incredibly diverse now - from gaming-focused Bazzite to the purely functional philosophy of Guix System. These distros couldn’t be more different in their approaches, but they all share this core atomic DNA.
These systems offer some seriously compelling stuff - updates that either work 100% or roll back automatically, no more “oops I bricked my system” moments, better security through immutability, and way fewer update headaches.
So what gives? Why aren’t more of us jumping on board? From my conversations and personal experience, I think it boils down to a few things:
Our current setups already work fine. Let’s be honest - when you’ve spent years perfecting your Arch or Debian setup, the thought of learning a whole new paradigm feels exhausting. Why fix what isn’t broken, right?
The learning curve seems steep. Yes, you can do pretty much everything on atomic distros that you can on traditional ones, but the how is different. Instead of apt install whatever and editing config files directly, you’re suddenly dealing with containers, layering, or declarative configs. It’s not necessarily harder, just… different.
The docs can be sparse. Traditional distros have decades of guides, forum posts, and StackExchange answers. Atomic systems? Not nearly as much. When something breaks at 2am, knowing there’s a million Google results for your error message is comforting.
I’ve been thinking about this because Linux has overcome similar hurdles before. Remember when gaming on Linux was basically impossible? Now we have the Steam Deck running an immutable SteamOS (of all things!) and my non-Linux friends are buying them without even realizing they’re using Linux. It just works.
So I’m genuinely curious - what’s keeping YOU from switching to an atomic distro? Is it specific software you need? Concerns about customization? Just can’t be bothered to learn new tricks?
Your answers might actually help developers focus on the right pain points. The atomic approach makes so much sense on paper that I’m convinced it’s the future - we just need to figure out what’s stopping people from making the jump today.
So what would it actually take to get you to switch? I’m all ears.
^ that’s the reason right there. You really can’t tinker with atomic distributions. And if you try, its just another level of abstraction that’s in your way.
I use atomic for systems that I want to work, full stop, no matter what.
I use traditional for systems and VMs that I want to tinker with. These may be rendered into an atomic distro at some point, if desired or necessary. But I honestly haven’t felt the need to do that yet.
It’s just about picking the appropriate baseline os type for what you want to do on the machine in question. Much like one would pick debian or fedora or rhel or suse-based distros for various technical and esoteric reasons.
This. The whole discussion about “tinkering with immutable distros” fells like it misses the point and literal meaning of atomic and immutable.
Rebuilding the whole OS to layer another immutable read-only part into it isn’t tinkering. Of changing one OS file has you rebooting, then that’s not tinker-friendly.
Atomic distributions are by definition something you don’t tinker with, and it stays the way you need it.
And no, having bundled distrobox or rollbacks doesn’t make it tinker friendly, you can do both on normal distribution.
But once you have done tinkering and want the system to stay the way it is - that’s what atomic means and is for.
This is the way. Prototype in a regular distro then lock it in with an immutable distro.
I did exactly this with my XMonad/polybar/rofi/dunst/alacritty configs which I now run on NixOS.
You have to be trolling.
You actually CAN tinker with atomic distros even more.
Immutable distros offer penalty-free tinkering because of the aforementioned atomicity and rollbacks. If I screw something up, I can just rollback the entire OS or whichever parts I want.
How do you tinker when everything but your home directory is in read-only mode?
Good question: the reply below is corrrct. Build time.
You’d basically have to do the modifications at build-time rather than at runtime, so you’d need to edit the image definition to do so (or effectively, create an “extension” of the image) - at least in the case of UBlue/Fedora Atomic based distributions. Each one has their own system for doing this (VanillaOS for example works similarly, IIRC).
(There is the
rpm-ostreelayering system, though from what I know the usage of it is discouraged)This is pretty much why I don’t use atomic/immutable distributions on my main system - they can still be tinkered with, but it ends up requiring a lot of setup in order to do so. The last time I checked, creating custom images based on the UBlue images was quite complex and the documentation left me pretty confused. In theory, I shouldn’t have any issues with it, I work with containers all the time at both work and my own personal projects, but it just didn’t “click” for me at the time.
It’s been a bit though, so I’ll need to revisit it at some point - I just don’t really have the time currently to learn an entire system just to make tweaks to my system. That being said, I’m perfectly happy with Bazzite on my ROG Ally where I don’t need to make any tweaks to the base system (same with my Steam Deck running SteamOS - atomic based distributions are great for these devices/use-cases).
I have also tried out NixOS a few times, but same issue - it requires a lot of time investment to get the hang of the Nix ecosystem. For what its worth, I find the idea of atomic distributions to be intriguing and I see their appeal, but it just isn’t for me at the moment.
Immutables are absolutely viable for tinkering. The most customized system I’ve ever had was an immutable distro, and I could tinker with 100% confidence that I would never lose the system.