this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2025
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Agree Mint is not the best option, in a big part because of their refusal to embrace QT and KDE, but I don't think every newbie needs immutability.
We often assume Linux newbies to be a bit of a grandma-style user - just browse, work with docs and play games from time to time.
But people coming to Linux are no average demographic - they are often enthusiastic about their computers and advanced use cases, and that's when they will get stuck with immutables because things work different there. Some things are different, some are harder, and some are pretty much impossible to do. Tinkering is complicated compared to traditional distros. Besides, it will always feel limiting, even if it directs you towards the best practices.
I like the way things are organized in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed - it's a regular mutable rolling release distribution, yet, thanks to snapper being beautifully configured out of the box, you can be sure you can revert nearly everything. Big changes, like initiating an update, automatically trigger snapshots of all system and program files, and they are available from GRUB, so you can always revert with ease. To me, it's a very healthy compromise between ability to tinker and safety of the system.
Unfortunately, however, Tumbleweed does little to appeal to newbie users. Sure, it has some graphical tools (take YaST), but they are severely outdated and don't explain much to the user, some updates require nuances Discover cannot work with, prompting the user to go with command-line tools, etc. I would love for something to emerge that would be similar in philosophy to Tumbleweed, but more newbie-friendly.
Also, love Flatpaks and install them whenever I can. Saves so much trouble.
I started on SuSe, and stayed with it for about 4 years. YaST is indeed a strong selling point for new users, easing management and configuration of their system. But aren't they getting rid of YaST now?
Yes, they want to phase it out, though currently it's still there. My general point is, it's just not designed for Linux newcomers and that's a big shame.
Huh?
I was a linux newcomer, and YaST felt very well designed for me.
Have they ruined the design in the past couple decades?
Well, maybe it was considered user friendly decades ago, but with the way interfaces evolved, it didn't progress all too much. Peoples' expectations did change, though.
What exactly is harder or impossible to do with immutables? As far as I am aware it is basically all upsides and no downsides honestly.
Last time I touched immutables I couldn't run software for censorship-resistant VPNs. Regular services are all blocked in my area (even more sophisticated ones like Mullvad and onion-routed Proton tunnels), so it takes a more involved software that doesn't work on immutables. That was a dealbreaker for me personally.
Besides, some things work better as native packages, not Flatpaks or Distroboxes. Wine is a simple example - sure, you can use Flatpaks like Bottles or Lutris or PortProton, but if you just want Wine without bells and whistles, native packet works much better than Flatpak.
You could have used rpm-ostree for that. All of that, actually.
Interesringly, ostree didn't solve the VPN issue for me, and for others too. Works fine on all mutable distros I tried, though (including regular Fedora editions).
Can't remember how it went with Wine. Besides, as far as I remember, installing native packets via ostree drastically increases update size and adds extra entries to manage, putting a limit on how much stuff you can reasonably install this way.
With that, I figured I'd rather take mutable system and apply good practices to it whenever possible. Snapshots? Check. Flatpaks? Always preferred. Sane management for native app repos? Yes. And with that, I never had my system fail me.
My use case can be a bit rare and specific, but there are plenty of different "rare issues" out there, and there's nothing more frustrating than figuring out your distro doesn't work with thing X and nothing can be done about it.
Immutable distros are cool, and hopefully it will all get resolved in a sane way. But to me, we're not there yet.