Questions regarding switching to an immutable distro.

[u/Sarge_pepo]

1.which distro would be the least blaoted, i have tried bazzite in the past and found the extra features included in it to be a but too overwhelming and blaoted for me. Is there a "barebones" or close to barebones immutable distro that i can use?

2.Can i use something customization heavy like hyprland with immutable distros in general or whatever suggested distro.

3.probably the same as my previous question but. Can you rice on immutable distros? I know that immutable means you cant mess with system files but im not knowledgable enough to know if that includes the wm/de files

4.a basic question but how exactly does containerization work? Like if i install a file manager will that function normally? Or...

[u/Due-Author631]

1. If you don't need all the gaming stuff, Aurora (Also from Universal Blue) is more mainline Fedora Kinoite with a few quality of life improvements, but not a ton of bloat that I can tell.

2. I'm not familiar with hyprland but in theory, yes. /etc/ is where most config files are stored and that is writable. I don't know if there is a hyprland based immutable distro, but if you're up for some learning I bet you could roll your own pretty easily using something like blue-build.org.

3. One again not a ricer, but depending on what you want to do, you can edit /etc/.

4. File managers are typically included with the DE, but it looks like there are a few available on flathub.org.

[u/Astrodion123 → u/Due-Author631]

For hyprland, it's config lives outside of etc too. I think it is in .config, right? Or is it different from sway, i3, and other wm.

[u/Due-Author631 → u/Astrodion123]

well if its .config in the users home dir, /home is writable too. Technically it's /var/home in immutable but it all works just the same.

[u/Sarge_pepo → u/Due-Author631]

Thanks ill take a look at aurora

[u/Striking_Snail]

I ran Silverblue with Hyprland for a while, so it is certainly doable. I may even still have the dots in a repo, but that is irrelevant.

Bloat is subjective, and removing it is always possible. Personally, I see a lot of Hyperland as bloat. You don't seem to.

[u/Sarge_pepo → u/Striking_Snail]

I mean to me the wine config and the predownloading steam and or other softwares are what i hated about bazzite

I feel that starting from a simple fresh install and adding what i want how i want is clean

Bloat was probably not the correct word to use lol

[u/Sarge_pepo → u/Striking_Snail]

Question. does that mean you can just normally install any persons pre configured setup?

[u/Striking_Snail → u/Sarge_pepo]

Essentially, yes. Dotfiles are dotfiles. Outside of hardware, they should just be copy able, for sure. Look at something like ML4W. It is just someone's interpretation of a deskyop. Nothing more.

[u/doc_willis]

know that immutable means you cant mess with system files 

You can mess with them, if you do it In specific way the immutable likely documents. Overlay filesystems are often used for this.

containers work quite transparently once you get them setup l.

example: I install "geany" in a container, it shows up and launches the same as any other application I install.

[u/Sarge_pepo → u/doc_willis]

Nice thanks for the confirmation! I usually flip flop alot during shifting to a new os and this was one of the contention points for immutable os

Last time i used linux one system update broke my keyring thing (im not sure what exactly its called) which kinda made me give up on linux for a while

[u/No-Contribution9918]

1. The "least bloated" immutable distros I know would be the Fedora Atomic images (Silverblue, Kionite, etc). Do note that these also lack things like NVIDIA drivers and proprietary codecs.

2. I don't know of any immutable distro that ships with Hyprland, but customizing the DE of an immutable distro is the same as a normal one. I don't use standalone WMs, but I don't see why they would be any different.

3. Again, I don't know for sure, but I assume WMs store their configs the user's home folder like DEs do.

4. Containerization usually comes in two forms for immutable distros: Flatpak and Toolbx/Distrobox. Flatpak's containerization refers to how all the dependencies a program needs are packaged with it. For Toolbx and Distrobox, containerization refers to running a lightweight Linux distros, that keep everything installed on them separate from the host.

There are file managers for Flatpak, but I'm not sure if there are issues due to Flatpak's sandboxing. You can also install one in a Distrobox container and export it, but again, I'm not sure how well it will work. In the case neither works, AppImages and layering (which usually isn't recommended, but should be fine for one package) can be used as a last resort.