I like that they went from Ubuntu to Debian as the base OS. I assume they target Debian Sid (the unstable flavor of Debian) because they can compensate for the instability with the immutability provided by ABroot. Or is it simply because the distro is pretty much in a rapid development stage?

The distribution looks very fun. Something quite new to play with for distro-hoppers and to learn more about some techs.

Last time I tried fedora-silverblue I didn't like it. My packages were scattered in 2 or 3 distrobox containers. It's not that much, but they can be different distributions, and then we add flatpak to the mix, and apps installed in the base OS with rpm-ostree... It felt like a frankenstein distro. Upgrades were time consuming, and not smooth at all. Not only did I have to learn how to manage a fedora-silverblue, but I also had to maintain a debian container, upgrade another fedora (a regular one, not silverblue), learn the quirks of flatpak, and... that was too much work. It doesn't really matter that I can confidently upgrade the empty base OS, if I still need to manually upgrade my fedora container and it can break the package I need from that container.

The approach here with Apx is worth a closer look. It abstracts away the different package managers of the main distro (`apx search` PACKAGE will translate to `apt-cache search` in debian container, `pacman -Ss` in arch container, `zypper search` in opensuse...). The concept of "exporting" the packages, and the UI around it, makes me think they aim at making the management of these distrobox containers easier.

One of the Vanilla OS lead developers Mirko also made Bottles[0], a lovely piece of software for running Windows apps on Linux without fussing about the command line

[0] https://usebottles.com/

Happy with Fedora Silverblue in that space: https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/silverblue/

Especially Project Bluefin: https://projectbluefin.io/

Of course, it's great to have a Debian based alternative!

> Orchid ensures your system is always up-to-date without interrupting your workflow. With smart updates that check only when your device is idle, you get the latest features

The screenshot doesn't seem to show a toggle to turn on/off the automatic updates, not sure if that's because you can't, or the screenshot is just a mock up?

I'm probably not alone in that I stop updating my OS and related software while working on things with deadlines, as the risk of breakage tends to be non-zero, and surely a new OS today has to at least allow people the choice for automatic updates?

I was expecting something like Gobo Linux, with various package managers installing packages into their own non-conflicting paths with Gobo symlink wizardry, but instead:

> [...] through Apx, a wrapper around Distrobox. The latter, in turn, is a wrapper around Podman, Docker, or the simple container manager lilipod

"Oh the kids these days... they don't even know the correct name is OS/2."

(loads article page)

"...Whooops!"

I’m glad to see the author note that the installer is problematic - I think I’ve only had 1 seamless install in about a dozen attempts.

I filed a bug report to add a function to copy error messages from the installer - would be really helpful to file meaningful bugs reports

Interesting that they're going with full A/B partitions; it's a touch simpler and more resilient (ex. against disk corruption), but ex. ostree is more space efficient.

I'm also curious if there is really no way to install things on the host - is there a way to install NVIDIA drivers or the like?

This sounds very similar to Fedora Silverblue- immutable OS (rpm-ostree) with rich container support. It uses Debian instead of Fedora of course. Are there other differences though?

This looks like an enterprise solution, because why would you install such a locked-down OS on your personal computers? Experienced users don't usually screw up their systems to need this thing, and new users don't touch the dangerous settings in the first place.

But the website makes no effort to relate to enterprise-level administration. Strange.

How does it compare to Qubes?

Read this as "Vanilla OS2" for a moment.

Has anyone put OS2 in Docker yet?

Most modern Debian/Ubuntu installations support overlayfs :

sudo apt install overlayroot

#edit the setup script vars

sudo nano /etc/overlayroot.conf

overlayroot="tmpfs:swap=1,recurse=0"

#set different role contexts for grub

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true

GRUB_DEFAULT=saved

GRUB_TIMEOUT=3

GRUB_RECORDFAIL_TIMEOUT=$GRUB_TIMEOUT

GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu

GRUB_TERMINAL=console

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_READONLY="quiet splash i915.tuxedo_disable_psr2=1 i915.enable_psr=0 "

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i915.tuxedo_disable_psr2=1 i915.enable_psr=0 overlayroot=disabled fsck.mode=force fsck.repair=yes "

#etc...

#then insert an auto menu item for the read only OS boot up

sudo nano /etc/grub.d/10_linux

  if [ "x$is_top_level" = xtrue ] && [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU}" != xtrue ]; 

then

    linux_entry "${OS}" "${version}" simple \
    "${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX} ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT}"

    linux_entry "${OS} READ ONLY OS" "${version}" simple \
    "${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX} ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_READONLY}"

#etc...

#and finally enable the role selection with your current kernel

sudo update-grub

sudo update-initramfs -u

For systems that have enough ram and cheap SSD it ensures the flash memory will last longer. Additionally, running /home on F2FS for workstations can improve long-term hardware health, as Desktop users do not require the OS to be writable in many use-cases.

It is not a perfect approach, as silly things done as root can always bork the backing partition.

Best of luck =3

I will try it. Immutability is a great trait. But hey, Linux Mint already is in the category of just works.