This is pretty sick. Not just flatpaks but easily install any application, using apt or dnf package managers, or deb or rpm files, in a container with a simple syntax. Wow. Wrap a GUI around it and this may be a winning formula for an easy and stable Linux desktop.
They are already doing it. Their forked gnome software takes deb packages too.
That's not mentioned in the text.
Are you speaking of distrobox/toolbox? Which is available on any linux system.
That's not mentioned in this specific blog post, but that's always been one of Vanilla OS's defining features, it's "apx" package manager to install those various types of packages
It's even using Distrobox actually, but the point is to make it simpler to install packages for those contrainers, with the user not worrying as much about managing the individual containers, and not having to memorize the specific commands for each individual distro's package manager
Basically, like the rest of Vanilla OS, the point isn't that you can't do this stuff elsewhere, it's that it's trying to make it easier to do it
"ABRoot is utility which provides full immutability and atomicity to a Linux system, by transacting between two root filesystems. Updates are performed using OCI images, to ensure that the system is always in a consistent state. It also allows for local atomic changes thanks to the integrated ABRoot package manager, which generates local OCI images with the user's changes, and then applies them on top of the system's default image."
(From ABRoot's page on Github)
This sounds a lot like what Fedora is trying to achieve with their ostree native containers.
Are there any technical differences between the two? Besides, of course, relying on tools with different names etc*. FWIW, it doesn't seem as if ABRoot (v2) allows one to pin multiple deployments, while this can be done relatively easily through the sudo ostree admin pin [-u] command on Fedora Atomic.
Ahh...I get it...I saw the title and thought it was about IBM's OS/2 in an "out of the box," uncustomized state, hence "Vanilla OS 2" code-named Orchid...oh, never mind already.
I've been really interested in this project for a while now and even more excited when they announced 2.0. I can't wait to try out the beta once it's released
i do not see the hype for immutable distros, they seem to be for an incredibly niche sub-section of the linux desktop which is already incredibly niche (i'll probably be answering my own question). good for the devs for trying new things i guess but these seem like hell to use if you are a tinkerer, gnome is whack and won't convince any new users to use linux. it seems like an operating system i'd install for my tech illiterate parents so i won't have to troubleshoot anything if it had a desktop like cinnamon or kde because they would have some familliarity with a windows like ui.
Why would "people who don't want to have to troubleshoot anything" be a niche? I love it exactly because it's mostly the same as what I used to have, except that I don't have to worry about updates breaking as much.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0