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Immutable Linux for low end PCs? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) by garold@lemmy.world to c/linux@programming.dev

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I have a laptop with 4 GB of RAM that I'd like to use for occasional comic book reading. (It's a touch screen 2-in-1 laptop that folds over into a tablet configuration.) I use Bazzite on my main PC and I love how low maintenance it is. Are there any immutable/atomic distros that featue XFCE, LXDE, or some other low RAM friendly desktop? Or, should I just layer XFCE or LXDE on top of UBlue Core or make my own image or something? Thanks!

EDIT: Thanks everyone for the feedback and quality discussion! It looks like the best options for immutable have a learning curve or time commitment attached (e.g. NixOS). For a daily driver computer it might be worth the trouble to learn, but in this case I decided to just go with standard Fedora XFCE for now.

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[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

I'm aware of how fedora atomic distros work, and that some things are configurable. My point is that a Bazzite user doesn't need to touch the cli or any config file, to just start using their desktop. I think those of us that have been using Linux for years, forget how rare it is for Windows and Mac users to touch the cli or config files. That's the experience that the Universal Blue ecosystem seeks to provide.

A bunch of containerfiles, scripts, ujust files, ... not hard to understand but kinda messy.

I prefer containerfiles tbh, because I use them for my server too.

And you kinda need a server. On NixOS you do this on your machine.

Technically you could set up the ublue infra on your own machine. Building and serving container images inside a container on your own host. Though it's more overhead than NixOS I'm sure.

do note that there are presets online and people help you set things up.

I'm aware but from what I've heard it's similar to docker compose configs. You can't just paste them in and expect everything to work. You'd have to copy one person's config for their entire desktop, and never deviate. At that point you may as well just use rpm-ostree, which is designed for this sort of workflow.

[–] exdor@programming.dev 2 points 39 minutes ago

Yes I am also a fan of atomic desktops for mass deployments of tailored systems

I just dont like the main ublue images or Fedoras main ones. I used kinoite-main from ublue for 2 years or so, and added a bunch of changes as overlays. It was kinda bad but also kinda good. Things like no longterm kernel being available at all for example.

NixOS is waay harder to use, also less secure for example from the perspective of a non-wheel user, like they have no polkit rules. You have snapshots, automatic updates etc though. And I just replaced my kernel with a longterm cachyos build which also works!

Fedora atomic desktops are fantastic, I really like ostree (which they get rid of, well...) but as soon as you need to change something, you have problems.

I have 3 machines and all have different configs so not even there could I use the same image really.