this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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If you kept a basic minimal Ubuntu host it would be trivial to maintain. And you can still do your "toolbox" stuff on top of it. No weird immutable stuff needed.
I just don't see the point. You want new users to understand containers. And to keep track of all the containers they maintain - possibly with different distros and using different things. And remember the difference between them and what is installed in each. Or just maintain one big container which is exactly what they would do normally anyway.
That's not true for most people.
You don't need to understand containers unless you're using the system for development -- which in Linux land means containers.
If you want it to be then it can. The risk of a failed update is vastly overblown.
Oh but you do. 1 hour into using Silverblue I was chastised by other users for "using it like any other Linux distro" when I started installing things into the "base" system with rpm-ostree. "Don't you know you should be doing that in a container?" I was asked.
I was just installing command-line utilities. Which I'm apparently supposed to do in a toolbox or other container which allows me to have... a mutable distro where I can do all the things I do in a "normal" OS. And which will require updating separately from the host OS. And which don't quite work right for everything because they're containers? Like you can't install
httpd
in one.