biribiri11

ostree is based on OCI images, the basis for containers and the like. “Rebasing” just refers to swapping out the OCI image containing your root with another.

I know ssh -X works fine in a rootless podman container, and so does waypipe. I’d be shocked if xpipe didn’t.

Not everything should be flatpak’d. In your case, xpipe (and in the future, waypipe) should always be installed in a docker container containing your normal “mutable” OS. It’s why Fedora is evaluating Ptyxis: when you open a terminal, instead of defaulting to your immutable root, it can be set up to go to a container which has your home mounted but a traditional, mounted root.

Don’t feed the trolls :)

I think a true arch linux experience can be done with immutable distros by modeling themselves after something like a nixos config or an rpm-ostree treefile. Like, during bootstrapping, you’d feed in a config file which would install everything into a future RO root. Would definitely be a lot of work, though, since pacman does (and probably will never) have the capability to manage multiple read-only roots.

You don’t have to install everything as a flatpak if you don’t want to. You can totally install most things in a rootless distrobox container, then use distrobox export (if you’re using distrobox instead of toolbx) to get a nice desktop entry. It’s how I run VSCode and Quartus Prime, for example.

There have been at least 1 PoCs for arch linux based on ostree: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/User:M1cha/Install_Arch_Linux_inside_OSTree

In addition, VanillaOS’s ABRoot has been packaged through the AUR

SteamOS3 is immutable and arch-based. You can see a fan-recreation of the image builder here

Otherwise, you can use the alpine linux immutable root with atomic upgrades guide.

Generally speaking, though, pacman is really basic, and the majority of the atomic/immutable magic happens in the package manager. That’s why only existing, complex package managers such as rpm-ostree (which shares a code base with DNF) have full support for it.

That’s why earthly exists. Now you can run your pipeline on a container with a “familiar syntax” inside another container with a “familiar syntax” inside of a “reproducible, easy-to-use” VM provisioned on top of probably KVM, as Torvalds intended

I used to be a Kagi subscriber because I believed in their image for Orion. Their strong views on privacy, imo, directly conflict with their action to keep the product closed source “because it’d slow them down”, so I ended up unsubscribing. Good to see I unsubbed just in time.

Config files are still editable. Most of them (rpm-ostree, for example) have a mechanism for managing packages, and subsequently rolling back if anything goes wrong or completely resetting, and leave /usr/local writable. For stuff like development and working with compiler toolchains, you should be using a container. I use vscode exported in a distrobox running Fedora 40, for example.

FWIW, gitlab-runner exec and earthly exist for running tests locally, with others things like nektos/act for GHA as a 3rd party solution. I’ll never get used to yaml, though, all my pipelines are mostly shell scripts. Using a markup language as a programming language was definitely one of the decisions of all time.

In the back of my mind I know this is there, but the cat | grep pattern is just muscle memory at this point