Look, I’ve only been a Linux user for a couple of years, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that we’re not afraid to tinker. Most of us came from Windows or macOS at some point, ditching the mainstream for better control, privacy, or just to escape the corporate BS. We’re the people who choose the harder path when we think it’s worth it.
Which is why I find it so damn interesting that atomic distros haven’t caught on more. The landscape is incredibly diverse now - from gaming-focused Bazzite to the purely functional philosophy of Guix System. These distros couldn’t be more different in their approaches, but they all share this core atomic DNA.
These systems offer some seriously compelling stuff - updates that either work 100% or roll back automatically, no more “oops I bricked my system” moments, better security through immutability, and way fewer update headaches.
So what gives? Why aren’t more of us jumping on board? From my conversations and personal experience, I think it boils down to a few things:
Our current setups already work fine. Let’s be honest - when you’ve spent years perfecting your Arch or Debian setup, the thought of learning a whole new paradigm feels exhausting. Why fix what isn’t broken, right?
The learning curve seems steep. Yes, you can do pretty much everything on atomic distros that you can on traditional ones, but the how is different. Instead of apt install whatever and editing config files directly, you’re suddenly dealing with containers, layering, or declarative configs. It’s not necessarily harder, just… different.
The docs can be sparse. Traditional distros have decades of guides, forum posts, and StackExchange answers. Atomic systems? Not nearly as much. When something breaks at 2am, knowing there’s a million Google results for your error message is comforting.
I’ve been thinking about this because Linux has overcome similar hurdles before. Remember when gaming on Linux was basically impossible? Now we have the Steam Deck running an immutable SteamOS (of all things!) and my non-Linux friends are buying them without even realizing they’re using Linux. It just works.
So I’m genuinely curious - what’s keeping YOU from switching to an atomic distro? Is it specific software you need? Concerns about customization? Just can’t be bothered to learn new tricks?
Your answers might actually help developers focus on the right pain points. The atomic approach makes so much sense on paper that I’m convinced it’s the future - we just need to figure out what’s stopping people from making the jump today.
So what would it actually take to get you to switch? I’m all ears.
I have to admit, when it comes to new developments in the Linux world, I tend to live under a rock … never switched to Wayland, not because I have any ideological reservations, but because my favorite WM (a minimalist WM developed by a friend of mine) is available only for Xorg.
I had heard about NixOS before, but until I stumbled upon this thread, I didn’t have a good understanding about what an atomic distro is. Now that I have a bit of an understanding, I guess I can only repeat what others said before, it seems to be solving a problem that I don’t have. I’ve been using rolling release distros for a very long time (at first Gentoo, like, 15 or more years ago, but Arch (btw) for over a decade now, with occasional, typically short stints in Debian-based distros), and the amount of problems caused by updates has been negligible for the last decade (Gentoo overlays 15 years ago could be a pain, for sure).
It does sometimes bother me that my OS config seems to so … static these days, but then again I have so many things going on in life on that I don’t feel a huge need to prioritize changing an OS that feels blazingly fast to use, stable, minimalist, and basically checks all the boxes. It just became my high-productivity comfort zone.
Probably because everyone is still constantly recommending Mint as a good distro for beginners.
People recommend Mint mostly as a better Ubuntu I think. Ubuntu is still the most popular and, increasingly, not the best distro to start with.
Fedora currently fills the space that Ubuntu used to fill. Probably the biggest caveat with Fedora now is the lack of codecs by default.
I JUST switched to Linux, and I tried Mint and Fedora, ending IP sticking with fedora. You are correct so many people said to use mint as a begginer.
Lack of interest. It doesn’t solve any problems that I have.
But just think about all the problems you’re not having that you could be solving!
Exactly. It solves problems which I don’t have.
I switched to nixos years ago. Its better now than it ever has been as far as available packages and etc. But it does present issues if you get off the beaten path - the “now you have two problems” issue. For instance:
- if software is not packaged for nixos already, you won’t be able to follow the ‘build from source’ directions on its github page or etc. You have to make a nix package or at least development environment first. That can be tricky and you won’t have help from the software dev.
- If software downloads exes that require libraries to be in a certain standard location, well, they won’t work. Android studio for instance, downloads compilers and so forth. There are workarounds, mostly, but it can take a while to discover and get working and I’m sure many people give up. Again, the android studio software and documentation will be no help at all.
That said, more and more projects are supporting nix now, and nixpkgs has gotten really big. I think they support more packages than any other distro now.
I like fucking around and finding out. I also don’t like roll backs, real men only roll forwards :)
(don’t take that too seriously please)
Traditional distros have decades of guides, forum posts, and StackExchange answers. Atomic systems? Not nearly as much. When something breaks at 2am, knowing there’s a million Google results for your error message is comforting.
This is my reason. I’ve been using Arch exclusively for a few years, but have used it on and off since 2008. I still don’t consider myself an expert by any means, and I frequently pull the docs and old forum threads to solve issues I run into.
Documentation is the most important deciding factor for me. I didn’t use more fully featured distributions, even if they were “easier” becuase if I can’t look up the answer, and I have to live with something because I don’t know what button to press… I mean you may as well just give me a windows box again.
Arch benefits not just from documentation but from its repo. Whatever you get told you need, it is always a relief to find it waiting there for you already tuned for your distro.
My current distro uses APK as a package manager and that is already atomic. So I guess my current setup works fine.
oops I bricked my system
I honestly can’t think of a single time I’ve done this in the 20 years I’ve been using linux.
what’s keeping YOU from switching to an atomic distro
I dunno, it just seems like the latest fad. Debian/Arch work just fine.
I’ve used Arch for 10 years as a primary desktop (well, Artix for the last 4) and barely had it bork on me. When is has, I’ve been able to boot it from grub in single user mode, mount my LUKS root drive, and downgrade whatever broke.
SteamOS has been fine for me on the SteamDeck.
I tried Bazzite for about a month then one day networking just broke and the documentation just wasn’t there.
idk I’ve gotten mine into a state i couldnt fix more times than I can count. Immuteable distros have been a game changer for me and if I’m being honest I think they’re going to be the biggest thing for mainstream adoption in Linux’s entire history.
I think “atomic” means “a bunch of actions grouped together as one action”, so that the system won’t end up in a state where some required actions are missing and becomes unusable. But it doesn’t mean it’s unto itself making a system unbreakable: If your system starts in a state of malfunctioning, then it also takes a series of actions to fix it, be it atomic or not.
Most Linux distributions start in the state of functioning after installation.
Yeah you’re right, “atomic” is not the same thing as “immutable”, but they are related terms and OP appeared to be using them interchangeably so 🤷♀️
I’m curious what you’re doing to your system that bricks it so often that would be considered a risk for a normal every-day normie user?
Upvoting but please stop using the term “bricking” this way. Bricking is permanent and there is no recovery. You have turned your device into a useless brick.
I’m quoting the OP. His argument is that atomic distros are the future because people are out there bricking their systems.
updates that either work 100% or roll back automatically, no more “oops I bricked my system” moments
Doesn’t mean you have to repeat it 🙂
The entire premise of this post is that people are supposedly bricking their systems, and atomic distros fix this.
My argument is that nobody is bricking their system. I will repeat it, because that’s the assumption made by op to argue in favor of atomic distros.
You are free to disagree, but at this point you are just arguing to argue.
Nothing good ever comes from ‘mainstream adoption’ though.
I bricked it because the Ubuntu LTS 22 to 24 upgrade failed and I forgot and rebooted anyway
I agree. I have become more amenable to things like Flatpak or Podman/Docker to keep the base system from being cluttered up with weird dependencies, but for the most part it doesn’t seem like there’s a huge upside to going full atomic if you’re already comfortable.
I love flatpak lol. something like debian + flatpak is win-win imo
The whole “I bricked my system” thing is just ridiculous.
It actually happened to me today on Arch.
I updated the system, including the kernel, everything went smoothly with no errors or warnings, I rebooted, and it said the ZSTD image created by mkinitcpio was corrupt and it failed to boot.
I booted the arch install iso, chrooted into my installation and reinstalled the linux package, rebooted, and it worked again.
I have no explanation, this is on a perfectly working laptop with a high end SSD, no errors in memtest, not overclocked, and I’ve been using this Arch install for over a year.
The chances of the package being corrupt when I downloaded it and the hash still being correct are astronomically low, the chances of a cosmic ray hitting the RAM at just the right time are probably just as low, the fact that mkinitcpio doesn’t verify the images that it creates is shocking, the whole thing would have been avoided on an immutable distro with A/B partitions.
Something like this happened to me once. Now I’m on Bazzite on my desktop and Aurora on my laptop.
Pure bliss.
You could have booted the old kernel in Grub.
Long, LONG, time linux user here, but to answer your question, most general users don’t tinker. They want it to ‘just work,’ which is why Apple, and to a lesser extent Windows, has dumbed everything down and made it proprietary (beyond just the locked in money thing) so users don’t have to think. Plus, support is a big money maker, for the corporations anyway.
I have a small testing field. My mother is using Opensuse Aeon and my father in law is using Fedora Silverblue. Since I am their IT support it’s fine. I asked what they wanna do on their Laptops and figured it doesn’t matter if they use windows, mac or any linux distro. Since I am most comfortable with linux, it is what they are using now. They are happy and I am getting the same amount of questions as before. Had no real trouble since then.
Neat. I’ve been thinking of doing something similar. My parents currently use a Mac, but they mainly just use the web browser. I was thinking of switching them to VanillaOS at some point.
mother is using Opensuse Aeon and my father in law is using Fedora Silverblue
How long have they been using those distros? Do you or they have any preferences for Aeon or Silverblue?
As long as it works and they can do their stuff, which is minimal, they don’t care. In fact they couldn’t say what they are using if you would ask them. They would probably just say Linux. This is in my opinion the best use case for immutable distros. While setting it up Silverblue was easier, as in the setup after installation had more software installed and there is no mandatory encryption setup. Aeon feels fresh and there is absolutely no bloat, but it is still RC at the moment.
I think most users just don’t really know much about atomic distros. A lot of people in this thread don’t seem to really understand the benefits and mention downsides that don’t really exist in most of them. I think eventually (and by that I mean in a VERY long time) atomic distros will become the standard. AerynOS is an upcoming one that seems to have a really amazing blend of it’s atomic features without disrupting the user experience people expect from more typical distros. It won’t replace Nix for me, but I hope it’ll convince a lot of people to try it out.
I also think atomic distros will become the norm eventually, but I think there’s a long way to go, and not just with user adoption. When I was looking into Nix I was very excited for quite a while, but eventually I realised it’s just another way of handling the package distribution/integration problem. A brilliant one, I agree, but with upsides and downsides like any other answer. And I realised that the incredible work put in by the Debian packagers is a better fit for my needs, no matter that it’s an older approach.
Perhaps one day, Nix or Nix-like will mature and grow to have the right options to fill my needs better. Perhaps one of the modern Atomics will be good enough for me. Or perhaps Debian et al will run out of steam and good works, or perhaps my needs will change. Or perhaps I’ll die first, after a long and happy life using traditional community package distributions.
But I look forward to the glorious future of GUIX/HURD. Even if I never live to see it.
There’s Guix sytem running on top of linux, so you don’t need to wait for hurd, :)
nothing. I am a bazzite and bluefin convert. it feels like a dream after 20+ years of futzing about with Linux.
In my case, I tinker quite a bit when I’m bored, and immutable distros, as well as atomic distros, raise barriers that I’d rather not have to jump over to have my fill of tinkering.
I’m on Debian stable on my desktop but I tinkered with SteamOS on the SteamDeck, so Arch.
no more “oops I bricked my system” moments
I don’t actually know what that means. If the system because unbootable it’s because I explicitly messed it up, for example by editing
fstabor tinkering with GRUB. I honestly can not remember anapt updatethat broke the system, and I don’t just mean my desktop (which I use daily, to work and play) but even my remote servers running for years.So… I think that part mostly comes down to trusting the maintainer of the pinned distribution. They are doing their best to avoid dependency hell in a complex setup but typically, if you do select stable, it will actually be stable.
I do have discussions like this every few months on Lemmy and I think most people are confused about what is an OS vs. what is an application. IMHO an application CAN be unstable, e.g. Firefox or the slicer for your 3D printer because you do want the very latest feature for some reason. The underlying building blocks though, e.g. kernel, package manager, arguably drivers, basically the lower down the stack you go, the more far reaching the consequences. So if you genuinely want an unstable system somehow, go for it, but then it is by choice, explicitly, and then I find it hard to understand how one could then not accept the risk of “oops I bricked my system” moment.
updates that either work 100% or roll back automatically, no more “oops I bricked my system” moments, better security through immutability, and way fewer update headaches.
i have used arch derivatives for 3 years and only fucked my system once, it took less than half an hour to fix so this isn’t particularly compelling for me
chasing the new hotness is not something i do with my daily driver, might check it out on a laptop if i’m bored
