It sounds a lot like the reasoning why I tried Debian a few years ago on my laptop.
And it’s still there. Hell I liked it so much my desktop is now too.
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I think this is a great observation.
I’m sure big hiccups will surface, they always do. No different than a Rolling.
The thing about immutable is…..I’m simultaneously appalled by it and intrigued by it. How do I reconcile that 
?
that’s pretty much how it works for me. Fantastic post here.
If immutables can promise me my chrooting days are over (I’ve done way too much chrooting in my linux life even though it’s been about 90% my own making).
what a fantastic thread.
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They cannot. There’s no way to save someone from themselves if they are persistent enough 
It could help?
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HAH Almost nothing is proof against a determined attack front :0
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There definitely are much stronger guard rails on these Fedora Atomic-based distros.
Other than something like hardware failure or filesystem corruption I think it would be pretty hard for a casual user to break it.
Of course, a more advanced user could do something like layer in some invalid drivers or something. Normally, in that case you could just boot into a prior image though.
The limitations imposed definitely makes it pretty hard to break the system.
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I only dabbled with KDE-Linux, which is build from Arch packages. But of course you can’t chroot to manipulate the system. It’s impossible since the “system” is one, big, fixed image file. It can’t be changed, that’s the point.
There are e.g. no fstab entries for the root system you can delete, and even /etc is snapshotted with the system files. Of course you can always do something stupid - I don’t know, format the EFI partition - but you have to make an effort.
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For cli tools like fzf, exa, etc., can you install them via brew, right?
Yes, exactly.
But that wouldn’t work for gui apps right? (No cask on linux like Mac). What about things like Dropbox? Still flatpak? That would require additional access settings? Or Unison GUI? Or fonts?
Those Universal Blue Images aren’t bad at all, I’ve tried Bluefin in the past and it was a nice experience. But atm I still prefer mutable distros over immutable ones.
But if someone just wants a working system without much hassle, they are definitely worth a look.
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You can run a container for all your cli tools and you can even expose GUI applications from the the container using toolbox or distrobox. Want a throwaway browser running in a container? Easy peasy. I think of it as Qubes light. Containers are not as secure in the separation department as a VM but they are definitely easier, and much lighter to quickly deploy use and then nuke, or you can keep them around to manage those apps that don’t have a flatpak available. For my daily driver it has been absolutely fantastic having a damn near unbreakable install.
Generally speaking, most GUI applications are installed via flatpak. Fonts can be installed via brew.
If flatpak doesn’t work for whatever reason there are many other ways to get software:
- Distrobox - This is baked into the image and there are flatpak tools installed by default to make it easier to expose applications
- Appimages
- Some software will work if you unpack it into your home dir and has built-in updaters. i.e. Firefox-based browsers or yt-dlp
- In the worst case scenario, you can layer software into the image. This is how you would install drivers for example
- There are other ways too, for example, you could use
nixto get software.
In my use case, I haven’t found anything I wanted that I couldn’t install via flatpak, brew or distrobox. I don’t have a single layered package installed. I am also not using any appimages.
All that being said, lets be clear, distros like this are not perfect for all use cases. They aren’t ideal for someone who wants complete control or a large amount of system customization. I am not running this on my main workstation.
There are other limitations too. For example, you can’t easily remove software from the base image.
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Are you sure fonts can be installed with brew? Last time I tried, they were based on cask and thus only available for mac. At least, that’s what I see here: https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/font-meslo-lg
I am positive that I have some installed:
>> brew list [1]
==> Formulae
berkeley-db@5 expat gdbm libgit2 libxcrypt perl zsh-syntax-highlighting
ca-certificates eza inxi libssh2 openssl@3 zlib
==> Casks
font-0xproto-nerd-font font-droid-sans-mono-nerd-font font-sauce-code-pro-nerd-font
font-blex-mono-nerd-font font-fira-code-nerd-font font-source-code-pro
font-caskaydia-mono-nerd-font font-go-mono-nerd-font font-ubuntu-nerd-font
font-comic-shanns-mono-nerd-font font-jetbrains-mono-nerd-font
It is possible that Aurora deployed those not from the normal repo. It will also deploy the jetbrains software as a cask.
EDIT: Doesn’t look like it is anything custom actually. I just installed the one you listed in your example without any issue.
>> brew install font-meslo-lg
✔︎ JSON API cask.jws.json Downloaded 15.3MB/ 15.3MB
✔︎ JSON API formula.jws.json Downloaded 32.0MB/ 32.0MB
==> Downloading https://github.com/andreberg/Meslo-Font/raw/master/dist/v1.2.1/Meslo%20LG%20v1.2.1.zip
==> Downloading from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/andreberg/Meslo-Font/master/dist/v1.2.1/Meslo%20LG%20v1.2.1.z
############################################################################################################# 100.0%
==> Installing Cask font-meslo-lg
<snip>
Also, it is easy enough to install fonts without a package manager.
Yes, I know how to install fonts “manually” (I also have an Ansible role for that https://www.lorenzobettini.it/2025/02/my-ansible-role-for-nerd-fonts/ 
I was curious about fonts through Homebrew. I’m pretty sure the last time I tried it, it refused to do so because it was a “cask”; I know it doesn’t make sense because fonts are not GUI applications… maybe something has changed in the meantime… the brew font’s web page is quite misleading in that respect.
Good to know that fonts can be installed via brew, btw!
Of course, in Arch, that’s not a problem because fonts are available
In Ubuntu, nerd fonts are not available via the package manager (that’s why I was resorting to Ansible), but with Homebrew, it’s much easier.
As far as I can tell, you can install casks on Linux.
However, most of them refuse to install stating that they only support MacOS.
I guess you can install only Casks that are not GUI applications: those are available only for mac IIRC.
Guardrails can be great, and I’m sitting here debating the quandary of still needing to fix the edge-case bugs of KDE Plasma, - screens not waking from sleep for example, where I’m knee-deep in /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/ setting up definitions to manually fix or workaround the bugs that remain. Immutable inherently means more stability, but unless I misunderstand this badly, it’s at the cost of the tweaks and workarounds not being as readily available in the classical sense.
Would I use an immutable distro in the future? Potentially yes, - if it means we’re at the point where the core distro is stable and functional to the point where I’m wondering why my screen never wakes up after resuming from sleep.
Honestly, I don’t think immutability helps or hurts that all that much with what you are looking at. You still have full control of your DE since that is mostly in your home directory. You also have the ability to edit files in /etc.
Immutable simply means that certain files can’t be changed. Different immutable distros offer varying amounts of control. If we are talking about Fedora Atomic-based distros specifically, then yes, you definitely lose some control. There is a lack of some of the flexibility you have in a traditional distro. As I said above, I have no intention of running this on my main workstation but I think it is has a use for the correct user/use-case.
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