I feel like inmutable distros are in a quite good state nowadays, and while solutions like bootc and sysexts are not “mainstream” yet, it’s getting there

when it comes to getting non Flatpak packages, things get interesting, there are a lot of options, really

AppImages, statically linked binaries, tarballs, OCI containers, distrobox/toolbx, Homebrew, VMs, Nix even experimental formats like RunImages, AppBundles and FlatImages

if you need some non-system level package, you’ll have a way to use it yet, still it seems sort of chaotic “which one should I choose? how will I be able to easily manage them?”

GPM, dbin, Soar, AM… and the list goes on

and it’s okay, the so called cloud native approach is still evolving, so this fragmentation is expected so it’s nice to share opinions about this while we’re living this interesting phase any thoughts?

  • TheModerateTankie [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    18 hours ago

    According to this post, once these projects move to bootc, they are going to get rid of layering and allow you to just dnf install what you need.

    Recent discussions upstream has consolidated around doing things the Ublue way. Pulling a base image from an upstream registry and using containerfiles to define a system locally. No custom scripts and unit files. No GitHub. Just writing custom changes to a containerfile and having them automatically apply on reboot. Running dnf install @virtualization would add the following line to the containerfile in the background:​

    RUN dnf install -y @virtualization

    The powerful thing about build time container image layers like this is that you can do deep customizations like switching out the kernel, changing the login manager, use your own custom boot screen, or redistribute your build by pushing it to a public/private container registry or as the Ublue team shown use container based ci/cd workflows for automated vulnerability scanning against public databases like NVD and CVE.

    Seems like it will get rid of a lot of pain points.