D&C GLug - Home Page

[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]

[LUG]Re: Immutability in a distro

 

Hello

As a NixOS user, I find it super good to keep up to date and have an
entire reproducible system.
You could also mount the NixOS root read only and make the rest be
generated on the fly:
https://blog.jolharg.com/post/2021/03/ephemeral-system-with-nixos/
You could even do the same to your home directory, keeping only a
couple of document directories and generating all your configs for
you, which I have started writing about a while ago.

It's a little harder to get used to if you're used to LSB or download
binaries that expect LSB (or scripts that require /bin/bash, who would
do that?) but there are ways around that.

The security I'm pretty happy with. The programs themselves are in a
readonly store and only doing a proper upgrade of the system as a
trusted user would allow you to change them.
Then, my auto updates come in and overwrite your changes :p

I would absolutely recommend it to anyone with a technical background,
but not anyone without one to do any changes within the system, but I
would absolutely recommend it to people giving their relatives an
operating system since it's not got a commonly used graphical package
manager (although there are some that are in progress), since it's
really hard to break and comes in generations so you can just go back
to the previous one if you do break anything. You can just set up an
installer or HD image that supports any hardware you like as well, if
you have the technical knowhow (the system is managed by configuration
after all, and one shouldn't randomly install something in a profile:
https://stop-using-nix-env.privatevoid.net/ )

Overall solid for a technical user or for a newbie simply managed by a
technical user (of course you can schedule updates).

At the moment my favourite and one I've used since about 2019 maybe.
-- 
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
FAQ: https://www.dcglug.org.uk/faq/