Does immutable distros something significant over btrfs snapshots?
Beacuse if you set up grub or refind to auto-load new snapshots, immutable distros starts to look like over-engineered complexity.
So, am I missing something here?
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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Btrfs snapshots + Snapper have been (somewhat) pioneered by openSUSE Tumbleweed. Yet, they see value in developing openSUSE Aeon (i.e. their attempt at an 'immutable' distro); otherwise they wouldn't be putting resources into it.
Hence, Btrfs snapshots is (at best) only able to fulfil some aspects we've come to expect from 'immutable' distros. But there's more to it than that.
One of the most simple (and, yet, perhaps most defining) feature that 'immutable' distros come with is atomic updates; i.e. updates either occur or not, there's no in-between messed up state caused by energy outage or whatsoever.
There's a lot more to it than that. To mention a few more:
Not all 'immutable' distros possess these qualities. Nor are they aspired by all of them. Hence, lumping them up together is actually a blatant oversight that's been committed way too frequently.
Regardless, if you're interested, consider trying out Fedora Atomic^[1]^, NixOS or openSUSE Aeon for yourself and see what it's all about.