PopOS Linux Unveils New Immutable Core?

Immutable linux distros are the hot new thing and PopOS has begun work on a new immutable core but what does that really mean for the distro going forward. Well not what you might think

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#PopOS #Linux #OpenSource #FOSS

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[michaelk__]

I think this kind off approach could work really well for people switching to Linux for the first time, having heard everything about how you can screw up your OS entirely and wanting a kinda safe mode for the important stuff.

Sure one could just go with a fully immutable file system, but I don't dislike having a middle ground option between fully immutable and user can uninstall the important stuff.


Though i wonder if the partially immutable pop os will become the only one at some point.

[EQuivalentTube]

Immutable system with OverlayFS on top would be the best of both worlds, IMO. The benefits of the immutable with flexibility of the mutable still in place. And if something goes horribly wrong, you can always nuke the top layer and get on with your life on a clean system, even with the user data intact if the home is separate partition or subvolume. Almost like fresh install but without the hassle.

[JoshDoingLinux]

This is kind of an idea I had for a more non-computer-literate-person distro, where the core Linux system was never being modified by the user (unless they really knew what they were doing), and then shadow copying the things software would modify into a user version of the core, and it would take a log down of the things that were modified so if you needed to shift back it could intelligently restore files back to what they were before.

[XH]

dbootstrap is used a lot to create a debian/ubuntu vm (or lxd image), a rescue system or manually install debian on a system without using the installer.
In my previous job, I used it to automatically install new systems without having to manage system images (which are faster but take more storage space)

[SMTM]

Isn't OverlayFS quite fundamental to how Docker works too? AFAIK every layer of an image is created with another overlay, which is how they work and how multiple images can share the same base (eg Ubuntu).

And, you probably know that, but rolling back your system with BTRFS snapshots doesn't need even an Immutable base system. It just needs you to make snapshots of a root subvolume, and keep a separate home subvolume.

[bruderdasisteinschwerermangel]

An immutable base can have quite nice benefits. I know graphene os uses it, and while it's somewhat annoying to restart my phone every time an update comes along (which is very frequent with graphene - though that's very much a good thing imo) I think it's a worthwhile choice for some systems.
As for more classical linux systems - at work we use a similar technique for an embedded linux. We have an image of the entire OS (couple of MB) that gets loaded into a RAM disk at boot. We can modify that RAM disk (not sure if the RAM disk itself rw or if we use overlayfs) and any changes you make are gone after a reboot.
Might sound annoying but it's quite because that system tends to just get its power cut whenever it's shut down, keeping everything in the RAM avoids file syste corruption and it also guarantees that any sensitive data we store or maybe log is gone once the power's out.
This is also super convinient for patching the OS, we just mount that small partition where the images are, replace the image and reboot.

[NormanF]

This actually makes sense from a security point of view: preventing malware/ransomware from hijacking the os core and crippling or subverting critical functions. If it can’t write there, the os integrity would remain uncompromised and intact. The folks at System76 want to build a more secure os while retaining the ease of use and familiarity users expect.

[merthyr]

Most people who dislike the idea of immutability in their OS, are usually people who can selectively disable immutability on their personal installs. SteamOS uses a simple command that disables/enables the setting live without a reboot. This would solve most people's fears imo.

[voxelfusion]

It would be nice if this enabled a sort of "safe boot" mode, where the mutable overlay wasn't loaded, kinda like booting off of a live cd.

[SuperTortise]

3:32 cdebootstrap? I don't see any bootstrap.

[tireseas]

Interesting design choice. It'll be interesting to see where it evolves.

[PestisNonSapien_GMO_exHuman]

I used to roll my own immutable ram based arch. Unlike silverblue I could update and use the base without a reboot. It was a major pain though. Sometimes I would make changes to my os. Reboot, and forget what changes I made and struggle to get things back to what I had. Also played around with a static ram based root where all new packages was installed in a chroot that I would access via systemd-nspawn. Which was kinda like siilverblue toolbox but faster. But I'm not that paranoid anymore.

Now if I want to clean things up or if I get paranoid about my system being compromised. Then I just boot to a custom arch install iso using ventoy on an sd card. 1-2 minutes later, due to caching and a local repo, I have a fresh install with the latest package versions. home, root, and /var/pacman/cache are untouched. modified /etc dotfiles restored from last backup.

Debootstrap is the same as pacstrap. Just a way to install your OS in a chroot just like you do with vanilla arch. It almost sounds like the article writer doesn't know the difference between debootsrap and chroot.

[Stopinvadingmyhardware]

The plan was to have a removable hashing mechanism to verify the kernel by the Admin.

[pmarreck]

dozens of languages try to do a crappy version of what Erlang/Elixir already does well, and now dozens of OS’es are now trying to do a crappy version of what NixOS already does well

[SNTrepie]

System 76 distributes drivers and firmware for the hardware they sell right? Maybe having a common immutable install among all of them would make those updates easier. Kind of like with SteamOS on the Steam Decks.

[rougenaxela]

An immutable base with OverlayFS overtop of it seems like a pretty sensible approach to me really, as long as some of the finer details with the package manager and modified configuration files can be worked out.

[alexstone]

I tried this myself in a virtualbox few years ago, its actually quite genius, especially for /etc, currently if you fuck up a config or delete it youre screwed cause many configs arent duplicated on system, with overlayfs you could just rm -rf /etc/* and you would be back to defaults

[mirkob]

This is actually a smart compromise. +1 to Pop!_OS

[rougenaxela]

It strikes me that if one got fancy, an immutable base could potentially have a filesystem image that's optimized to maximize the sequential access during boot.

[speedytruck]

So it’s basically Fedora Silverblue now with the overlaying packages thing of rpm-ostree. Unlike Silverblue though, it doesn’t look like it supports multiple images to rollback from without using external tools like btrfs.