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.
we’re not afraid to tinker
what’s keeping YOU from switching to an atomic distro
- Being able to tinker. Atomic distros are about choosing in advance to not tinker with a large part of your system. There’s good reasons to do that, sure, but not good enough for me right now.
Atomic distros are not inherently immutable, although they often are because it’s an easy byproduct of atomic design.
Atomicity means transactions are either applied in whole or not at all. That means that your system will never be stuck in a broken half-way state if it crashes during an update.
In practice, this is often implemented through filesystem images that are mounted for instant changes. These are then often mounted as read-only for immutability, but distros usually have options to use them as read-write as well for tinkering.
In my opinion, atomicity is the future. The risk of your system breaking during every upgrade is tolerable, but why not eliminate it altogether? Immutability is a different game and is mostly a preference thing.
Thank you for the correction. So then, a more tinker-ready OS could do atomic upgrades, but allow manual changes/customisation to the system internals. And also handle traditional distribution-style package installation.
I suppose some people might still want to upgrade certain packages and not others, but that seems a pretty rare case these days - or maybe I just don’t hang out in the right crowds!
Debian just works, it doesn’t complain if I forget to update it for a couple years, and I don’t feel like reinstalling my os this year
Managing 30+ machines with NixOS in a single unified config, currently sitting at a total of around 17k lines of nix code.
In other words, I have put a lot of time into this. It was a very steep learning curve, but it’s paid for itself multiple times over by now.
For “newcomers”, my observations can be boiled down to this: if you only manage one machine, it’s not worth it. Maaaaaybe give home-manager a try and see if you like it.
Situation is probably different with things like Silverblue (IMO throwing those kinds of distros in with Guix and NixOS is a bit misleading - very different philosophy and user experience), but I can only talk about Nix here.
With Nix, the real benefit comes once you handle multiple machines. Identical or similar configurations get combined or parametrized. Config values set for Host A can be reused and decisions be made automatically based on it in Host B, for example:
- all hosts know my SSH pub keys from first boot, without ever having to configure anything in any of them
- my NAS IP is set once, all hosts requiring NAS access just reuse it implicitly
- creating new proxmox VMs just means adding, on average, 10 lines of nix config (saying: your ID will be this, you will run that service) and a single command, because the heavy lifting and configuring has already been done, once -…
Customizations, especially theming, at the system level. Or just learning to modify system files on an atomic distro, in general.
I’m sure it’s doable and I am genuinely interested in moving to atomic/immutable distros. But more for the security aspect than reliability as I’ve yet to break my install of Linux in a way that takes more than an hour to recover from. I’ve enjoyed the predictability of Debian and my very particular taste in UI makes for additional baggage just reinstalling, let alone moving to a very different distro.
I once installed Bazzite on my PC. I am an sway user/addict. So thought about installing sway on Bazzite.
Below is my journey
Let me try to download and compile it.
Downloaded but it won’t compile.
The libraries/dependancies are not installed. Here, try installing the packages via brew.
Nope, some of them are available and some are not on Brew.
Now what do I do? Okay, there is something called distrobox where I can install whatever I want.
Looks like I have to learn distrobox. Wait, sway is not a simple application, it’s a full blown window manager. Even if it compiles, will it work?
Most of the people online (Discord) told me the process won’t be very pretty.
Do I want to invest another week experimenting with distrobox?
Nope, installed Nobara the next day and I’m happy.
Disclaimer: Bazzite is a fantastic distro and it’s powering my RoG Ally. Atomic distros are fantastic for the niche they fill.
I use Gentoo, and atomic just doesn’t seem like a fit for me. That said I could see it being great for people who don’t tinker. If I were to get a family member to use linux I might pick an atomic distro.
Guix is source base rolling release if you plan to keep it up to date weekly, so I don’t know why you feel it so distant from Gentoo. Binaries updates are still rolling released but their pace is slower.
I just really like portage, I guess. I know how to use it, and learning how to do the same thing in guix doesn’t offer any benefits that I know of that matter to me, yet. Maybe one day.
I use atomic distros on my server and a media centre, but don’t see any reason to do it on my main systems. Stability is fine, and atomic distros make said tinkering more difficult.
Flatpaks are problematic enough on its own and I avoid them when at all possible.
I’d never want to make my whole system flatpak based. That’s the opposite of what I want.
Let’s answer your question with a question: Why should I reimage my whole tailored home setup, have to learn a different method of doing everything on my system, and ultimately slow my workflow for an atomic system? Sure, it’s cool, but it’s not worth upending everything that I use for. I’m glad it exists, but I don’t currently have a need for it.
I tried Silverblue.
And I wanted to run it without layering, cause everyone tells you to avoid it, since it kinda defeats the purpose of an atomic distro in the first place.First of all, it was buggy. As an example, automatic updates didn’t work, I had to click the update button and reboot twice for it to actually apply, even though it was activated in the settings.
None of the docs helped (actually, there wasn’t any in-depth documentation at all). And no one had a solution besides “It should actually just work”.
That’s the main advantage (the devs test with the exact same system you run) gone right from the start.Then Firefox is part of the base image, but it’s Fedora’s version, which doesn’t come with all codecs.
If you install Firefox from Flathub, you now have 2 Firefox’s installed, with identical icons in the GUI. So you need to hide one by deleting its desktop file. Except you can’t. So you have to copy it into your home directory and edit it with a text editor to hide the icon.
Then I went through all the installed programs to replace the Fedora version with the Flathub version, cause what’s the point of Flatpak if I’m using derivative versions? I want what the app’s dev made.Then it was missing command line tools I’m used to. Installing them in a container didn’t work well cause they need access to the entire system.
Finally, I realized even Gnome Tweaks wasn’t part of the installation, and it isn’t available as Flatpak.
That’s the point where I tipped my hat and went back to Debian. Which isn’t atomic, but never gave me any issues in the first place.Maybe it’s better now, I was on the previous version. Or maybe the Ublue flavours are better. But I don’t see any reason to start distro-hopping again after that first experience.
Honestly what you are describing here would bother me too. For example on my notebook I rely on configuring grub to use kernel argument
amdgpu.abmlevel=0which fixes the screen colors getting washed out when in battery saving mode, but I doubt I would be able to configure grub on an atomic distro.
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
I didn’t say bricking, I was responding to the bit you wrote about immutability being “a fad”.
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 🤷♀️
All “atomic” distros I’ve encountered allow booting into previous versions, so this is simply not an issue.
Nothing good ever comes from ‘mainstream adoption’ though.
Ohh well go up a half a percent point boys. If we don’t include the steam deck.
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
I bricked it because the Ubuntu LTS 22 to 24 upgrade failed and I forgot and rebooted anyway
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.
I like the fact that linux is so easy to poke around in, even if it breaks. Breaking can be a good thing since that way I learn the most. I enjoy rebuilding my entire setup from time to time. I diskile the additional complexity.
Atomic distros dont stop you from breaking them, they just make it easy to undo breakage
I’m not trying to convince anyone, just explaining why I do the things I do and why I think the way I think. Fixing it easily misses the point, for me personally. If I can just undo my mistake then I miss the strong incentive to figure out what went wrong. Immutability itself is a wonderful thing. I love to write code using as much immutability as I can but thats for work. In my free time I want to raw dog a mutable linux distro because it’s fun for me.
Nvidia RTX graphic card, Valorant, Microsoft Office suite, Adobe Creative Cloud, QuickBooks, AutoCAD, Revit, Visual Studio (full version), DirectX 12-dependent games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, Microsoft Teams, Visio, Power BI Desktop, Windows Mixed Reality, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, CorelDRAW, Ubisoft Connect games, Cricut Design Space, MAGIX Vegas Pro, Acronis True Image, some more industry software… just to name a few.
You listed malwares. Nvidia works tho.
Sure, but stuff like this makes the vendor lock real. Forgot to mention solidworks and for example group policy’s (gpo) as well as windows vm / azure at work.
I actually used bazzite as my first mainstream linux distro and I hated it because every second command I pasted in didn’t work and I didn’t understand why. I eventually figured out it was due to the immutable nature of bazzite and began telling everyone to never use bazzite because it doesn’t work very well.
Now I actually understand what the actual upsides are and why it’s different I will change to mainstream distros to actually get a hold of what it’s usually like before considering changing back over.
