Immutable Distros: The Future Of Operating Systems

Hello there! I did some tweaking to the mic and the volume sounds way better but I think I had the compressor turned up a bit high this time. I'll have it dialed in soon!

I'll be doing some reviews of immutable distros in the near future, except for Nix. I need to spend more time learning that one before I do a video on it.

At least for one user (me) the supposed benefits look absolutely not worth the hassle. All the applications from Flatpak? Srsly? Why not from a cesspool, Playmaket or AppleStore? Extra efforts to integrate the apps or some "unorthodox" settings into the base system? Smells like Apple Inc products. Too close to losing usability and freedom for the sake of "securing" a glorified launcher any OS is. Definitely smells like Apple (here comes a clip with a Sniffer from Chewing the Fat).

Congratulations, you quite literally just described modern macos. Immutable system files (heck they're on their own readonly disk volume), elevated system permissions for automated system administration and updates that no user (not even root!) can escalate up to, and sane, centralized updates w/ professional QA that are guaranteed to never (probably) break things. And certainly never outside of a yearly major (not minor / patch!) version update.

There's some good ideas here (modern linux sandboxing + file system / user space siloing), but... yeah, if you want to see what a comprehensively generally secure-by-design (and comprehensively user / idiot proof) modern OS looks like, see macos and what it's been doing for the last 10+ years.

Bonus points since macos is still quite literally just a heavily modified, semi-closed source BSD distro running on the FOSS mach kernel and an (admittedly very old, but functional and extremely stable) freebsd userland.

It is in fact a great example of what you could do with a professional desktop-focused linux distro given a heck of a lot more focus on polish, user experience, core system security, and QA.

I found universal blue a good example of how great immutable can be for both end-user and security. Do you know the project ? What are your thoughts about it ?

DJ Ware 2

Great video as always. Curious what's your take on MacOS from a security perspective?