This is extremely encouraging to me. I am not affiliated with the project but here is what I’ve gathered. Run by Mike.
- Nix (with the functional declarative design)
- Cinnamon (DE mostly used by Linux Mint, Mike and I think Cinnamon doesn’t get enough respect)
- Two versions, main and “lite”.
- zero config auto update is a huge selling point imo
- flatpak is a nice touch
Main:
- “4 core and 4GB of ram” target
- Flatpak integrated and auto-updates
- Zoom flatpak
- Chrome flatpak and Firefox
- Libreoffice flatpak
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
git
firefox
libnotify
gawk
gnugrep
sudo
dconf
gnome-software
gnome-calculator
gnome-calendar
gnome-screenshot
flatpak
xdg-desktop-portal
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
system-config-printer
Lite:
- “2 core and 2 GB of RAM” target
- no flatpak
- firefox
zramSwap.memoryPercent = 100;
MemoryHigh = "500M";
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
git
firefox
libnotify
gawk
sudo
gnome-calculator
gnome-calendar
gnome-screenshot
system-config-printer
];
Installing
boot the special ISO and connect to wifi via the system settings via the start menu (rough edges here). install.
secure boot is not first-class supported in nix but it ‘can’ be done.
Does the market need this?
It feels like yes. See what do you install on other people’s computers?. A zero-support OS that isn’t tied into ChromeOS is a tall order. There are a lot of distros that are “semi” friendly but which are strong enough to give to a stranger and never hear from them again?
The pitch is compelling enough that I put it on my small laptop. I used it for about 20 minutes. That laptop is not a project laptop, and if I could just browse and do basic linux stuff and never think about maintaining it again I’d be happy. I can report back (and contribute to nixbook) if it serves my needs. If it passes my tests I may transition the family Win10 PC to nixbook. I’m getting spooked at how many more threats target Windows than Linux.
tweaking
I’m an ultra noob with nix but you should be able to edit this and have it work. Mike has a post about which config file to edit but I can’t find it. https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nixos-rebuild
$ # Edit your configuration
$ sudo nano /etc/nixos/configuration.nix
$ # Rebuild your system
$ sudo nixos-rebuild switch
I added silversearcher tldr tilde and seemed to work.
I have to ask: what’s with all the obsession with immutable distro? As much as I’d like to try it myself, would you really recommend it to beginners over a more conventional distro like Mint?
I guess the promise of having updates JustWork™? I don’t currently use one but I see the appeal.
However FWIW, unlike its namesake ChromeOS, the “Nixbook OS” this post is about is not actually an immutable distro: the instructions are to install NixOS normally and then clone the nixbook repo into
/etc/nixbookand run itsinstall.sh. Among other things it installs an update service which runs git pull on that repo as well as runningnixos-rebuild boot --upgradeandflatpak update --noninteractive --assumeyesetc.Cheers to this guy for what he’s doing, but the name is a little confusing. This approach works but it is not nearly as robust as the immutable distro paradigm implied by the name.
Good point. It’s a 1000 person PoC and not yet a titan. He’s doing in-the-field testing and even has his two kids daily driving it (one on testing branch, haha).
As an experienced Linux user I’ll say immutable Fedora (Bazzite) is the most stable OS I’ve ever used. Had to do a rollback maybe once, because of bad pkg layering, which they discourage, never had a pkg conflict on upgrade, everything installs and uninstalls cleanly (with flatpak or brew), and there’s been maybe one, very uncommon, use-case I thought the OS wasn’t up to doing.
I’ve never used Mint but I’m guessing its ease-of-use is mainly due to maintenance and configuration being done largely through the UI. Immutable distros tend to be UI heavy as well because approaching problems the traditional way (through CLI) are more likely to have you edit the read only sections of the filesystem.
Immutable or not I think most casual users will be safe if they don’t use the terminal.
It’s what you would recommend for people you can’t trust even with having glass over the self-destruct button. Immutable distros are the equivalent of pouring a concrete shell.
The elderly, very young children, and the tech illiterate (who have no desire to learn) would be appropriate candidates. Enthusiasts, students, programmers, and those who tinker/create probably don’t need that level of safety.
I’d like to make a counter point to this. I’m an enthusiast who hosts my own servers and has been using Linux for well over a decade exclusively. I personally love having Bazzite on my main desktop, as it always works as expected. Of course, I wouldn’t use immutable on my servers, but I think it’s perfectly fine for a desktop OS. I always have
rpm-ostreeoverlays if/when I need to change something immutable, though I’ve found myself not really needing to do so. I get by with only making changes to my home folder.Immutable distros just have a great user experience, and don’t ever break on their own. I personally recommend them to everyone for desktop use.
Yeah, immutable may be more friendly to non-tech savvy users, but it doesn’t mean it’s lacking any functionality. The processes are just different.
I’ve been on Bazzite for a while now and it’s almost boring how stable it is.
I agree it’s a potential drawback for people that like tinkering. It kind of turns your computer into a very flexible gaming console.
Yeah, I have the same experience. Barring sudden changes to included softwares (like changing Discover out for Bazaar), my Bazzite installation just works without any intervention, and major version updates are applied in regular updates.
I barely even noticed when they replaced Discover with Bazaar. But that’s probably because I generally use CLI to update and what not. I love that “ujust update” updates everything including distroboxes and firmware.
I use the terminal for updates too, I just use the store when I want to install new software, and that’s how I noticed. There was also a dead icon on my taskbar.
Why not an immutable OS for servers? It seems like an even better choice for servers than for a desktop to me. It’s basically just like docker/containers but for your whole OS, configuration-wise.
I love my declarative NixOS servers/systems, and would never go back to imperative setups, it just seems archaic. The only exception I have (for now) is my pfSense router, as I don’t trust myself enough to setup a secure router.
I find that I have to adjust files that would be immutable quite often for servers. The immutability tends to get in the way of configuring some parts of the system, and having to reboot to apply updates results in downtime.
You don’t have to reboot to adjust configuration or update. At least not with NixOS, don’t know much about other immutables.
With rpm-ostree systems (Fedora and derivatives), you do. Well, technically you can apply them live, but it is highly inadvisable to do so, and sometimes you actually can’t at all
I never really worked much with rpm-ostree, besides a short stint with Bazzite. But never really customized it, so I don’t really know how that experience is. But I would encourage you to look into NixOS (or something else not image based) whenever you feel to experiment with another immutable. It’s very nice for servers.
That’s a reasonable point of view - I’ve just had plenty of negative experiences with immutable distros that completely undo any customizations I’ve performed (SteamOS mostly), but that does somewhat come down to nitpick territory.
A better way to put it is enthusiasts don’t need an immutable distro, but can use one well. However elderly, very young children, and the tech illiterate likely require an immutable distro to prevent accidental (or misguided) mishaps, unless there’s special circumstances that require something else.
It is undoing the customizations because you weren’t doing them the correct way for an immutable distro. That’s a feature, not a bug.
Once you learn how it all works, and what the processes are to do certain things, you can do pretty much anything you want to it.
I’d agree with that take. I think that immutable distros can appeal to everyone, and after a decade of Linux use, I feel I’ve toned back how much I need to edit the finer details of my system. I still thoroughly customize my desktop environment, but small tweaks to the root filesystem are generally unnecessary for me. /etc isn’t immutable (at least not in Bazzite), and that’s where much of my customization happens, at least what’s outside of my home folder. I find myself writing plenty of bash scripts that I can just keep in
~/.local/bin/instead of/usr/local/bin/. Beyond that, KDE has so much customization built in, that the only thing I’ve done before that required an overlay to change was the login screen background, which was a simple conf edit with a one-liner overlay command, and has been rock solid ever since.I think the main difference is that immutable distros just require you to think differently about how you customize your system. You can do anything you want to it with overlays, but I find that I simply don’t need to do any of those things with a distro like Bazzite. It already has gaming-oriented kernel tweaks, including tweaks to the scheduler, so I’m getting what I would have done anyway, but done in a way that is tested and stable. Granted, I’m sure some of it depends on which immutable distro you use, but that’s true of mutable distros as well.
In my experience, non-technically minded people I’ve installed Linux for are þe least likely to do anything to screw up þeir system.
I don’t see it as a solution for þe ultra non-technical. Eiþer þey never upgrade, so it never breaks anyway, or if it does break because of an upgrade my MIL with dementia isn’t going to be figuring out how roll back in NixOS.
As someone with an IT background who has spent countless hours helping family members, you end up with users (mainly children) who copy and paste random crap from the internet and break something, even if there’s safety glass over the self-destruct button (sudo). I’d rather have the extra peace of mind to know they can’t fuck it up.
Absolutely. It’s in the same vein as phone OSes: a stock OS with an app store. It can do more than that, sure, but for a new user that’s what it is.