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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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Emulating NixOS' impermanence module on Fedora Atomic (discuss.online)

submitted 2 days ago by jamesbunagna@discuss.online to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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Hey folks! After using Fedora Atomic for quite a while and really appreciating its approach, I've been eyeing one particular feature from NixOS: its congruent system management. Inspired from Graham Christensen's "Erase your darlings" post, I'd like to explore implementing something similar to NixOS' impermanence module on Fedora Atomic as one step towards better state management.

Why not just switch to NixOS? Well, while NixOS's package management and declarative approach are incredible, I specifically value Fedora's stringent package vetting and security practices. The nixpkgs repository, despite its impressive scope, operates more like a user repository in terms of security standards.

I've already made some progress with the following:

Fedora Atomic's shift to bootable OCI containers has helped with base system reproducibility when one creates their own images. This process has thankfully been streamlined by templates offered by either uBlue or BlueBuild
Using chezmoi for dotfiles (would've loved home-manager if it played nicer with SELinux)

My current (most likely naive and perhaps even wrong) approach involves tmpfs mounts and bind mounts to /persist, along with systemd-tmpfiles. I'm well aware this won't give me the declarative goodness of NixOS, nor will it make the system truly stateless - there's surely plenty of state I'm missing - but I'm hoping it might be another step in the right direction.

Particularly interested in:

Best practices for managing persistent vs temporary state
Working with rpm-ostree's (or bootc') assumptions
Tools or scripts that might help
Alternative approaches that achieve similar goals

Thanks in advance!

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[–] QuazarOmega@lemy.lol 1 points 1 day ago

clicked on cancel instead of reply

Aw man haha

moved past Nix and use flatpak and brew

That sounds a bit funny, when those technologies are just (despite me not liking to use this term) inferior, in terms of packaging, only flatpak really shines because of its embedded permission model, one of the reasons why I also still use it, though there are ways to use bubblewrap with Nix packages which I honestly haven't tried.

So, perhaps I shouldn't be necessarily opposed to home-manager

Yeah, I think you should at least give it a shot and see how you like it, it's not as easy right out of the box as the other 2 you mentioned, of course, so you should find out for yourself what you feel more comfortable using.

crossover between brew and chezmoi

That is kinda neat, but, to me, it really feels more like a last resort when you somehow can't access Nix, Nix is just that much more structurally sound than all the other 3rd party package managers that you can install alongside your system's, I say that mostly because of versioning that doesn't break, and package manager as well as configuration being all cohesively described with a single language, it's not exactly easy, so I won't say "what more could you want?", but look at the features of both to see what you really want first.