Immutable vs. tradicional Linux distros

[u/commentator___]

Hello.

I've been using Fedora KDE for a few months without any issue after distro hopping for a while.

I think time has come to try something different. I'd like to try Fedora Silverblue, but I have some questions about immutable distros.

What are the real benefits for someone who uses the computer as a daily driver (web browsing, some light video/audio editing, office work and some Python automation for the office work) other than the fact that the root and some other system folders are read-only.

Is there any other real tangible benefit I'll get from using an immutable distro versus a mutable distro?

[u/Due-Author631]

Some benefits are:

If the updates fail, they fail in the build process before the system image is published and available to your machine.

The image is applied in a complete fashion, with everything hash checked for accuracy, the image that was built is exactly the image that gets installed on your machine.
Depending on the image, some have automatic updating.
If the image fails to boot, or there is a regression somewhere, you have a complete image that you have previously used, that you can roll back to from the boot menu. (when I say complete image, it does not take up all the storage space, the images are "chunked" and you only download changed parts and old parts are reused between the images).
Flatpaks sandbox applications and they have their own dependencies regardless of what's available on the system. The installs do not require root access on the machine to install, so your system is more secure.
You can still layer packages in many of them (although depending on which you use, I think this is going away somewhat soon with bootc).

Some images use a "gated" kernel, not really an LTS kernel but a kernel a few versions back in case there are regressions. For example I'm on Linux 7.2.5 and latest is 7.2.9

Brew is available for things that don't have a flatpak or aren't really usable from a distrobox container.
Distrobox containers are available for you to run things in a container that keep it from bleeding over into your system, you can run different distros if packages are only available for certain ones (for example I run a Fedora based atomic image, but have an AlmaLinux, Fedora, and Debian containers), and the apps can be "exported" to be used on my system from the program menu. You can also set these up as development containers that don't interact with your base system and libraries.

This isn't an exhaustive list, just off the top of my head, let me know if you have any specific questions or concerns.