bsergay

What are the main advantages of using this, that make it more secure?

More secure compared to your average distro? Or more secure compared to a specific set of distros? Unless, this is properly specified, this comment could become very unwieldy 😅.

Thanks in advance for specifying!

I daily drive secureblue; or, to be more precise, its bluefin-main-userns-hardened image.

"Why?", you ask. Because security is my number one priority.

I dismiss other often mentioned hardened systems for the following reasons:

• Qubes OS; my laptop doesn't satisfy its hardware requirements. Otherwise, this would have been my daily driver.
• Kicksecure; primary reason would be how it's dependent on backports for security updates.
• Tails; while excellent for protection against forensics, its security model is far from impressive otherwise. It's not really meant as a daily driver for general use anyways.
• Spectrum OS; heavily inspired by Qubes OS and NixOS, which is a big W. Unfortunately, it's not ready yet.

Nix, the package manager, is distro-agnostic. Add Home Manager on top of it and you're good to go; both packages and dotfiles are dealt with.

I could probably summarize your experience as "skill issue".

I don’t understand the hype of immutables, or usability even.

I suppose this article/blogpost by Lennart Poettering should suffice. Though, this article/blogpost by Colin Walters is also cool.

I tried Bazzite today after Nobara nuked itself, and I couldn’t even paste my old Firefox profile since the actual folder apparently sits within the immutable folder structure.

This is simply false as pointed out by others already.

I didn’t even have time to reach the software limitations with how fast I tried the next distro.

You will have a very hard time on Linux with that mindset. And, to be honest, literally any OS you aren't already familiar with.

Still hopping though, because apparently Fedora just nukes itself when you try to install codecs

I wouldn't be surprised if you just searched this through your favorite search engine and settled with whatever random solution you came across instead of relying upon RPM Fusion's documentation on the matter.

and I think I have about every major distro tested by now.

While this could be true, I wonder what prevented you from sticking with any one of them.

Linux is cursed.

It's definitely a lot harder if you've got major skill issues.

Thanks for clarifying!

IMO immutable distros aren’t a best fit for a desktop computer. It can do so much more than gaming and turning it into a dedicated console is a step back if a normal linux distro can do just as well.

I would personally nuance this to: "Current iterations of 'immutable distros' that have evolved from traditional distros haven't matured sufficiently yet to tackle 99.99% of the use cases 'easily'." The exact number on the percentage I don't know. I believe most people that use their PCs as a glorified app launcher should be more than fine. But we start experiencing major difficulties the very moment that (a)kmods are involved; some of which are 'supported'~ish, while others certainly aren't.

But, I simply fail to see why a future iteration would not be able to solve related issues.

Those definitely amount to a major difference. Thanks for clarifying!

Thank you. This does give an idea.

It has been my pleasure.

Follow up question : Is Arch really that good?

Depends entirely on your needs. There is a use case for Arch. However, if you're completely new to Linux, then it's very likely that a 'slower'-moving distro (like (anything based on) Debian (or Ubuntu)) might better suit you.

Wait for Ubuntu Core Desktop to come out.

It’s a steering wheel driver.

Could you perhaps be more precise? Is it a specific one? Or are there a multitude of steering wheel drivers that satisfy your needs?

And virtualbox.

Do you specifically need VirtualBox? Or would Qemu/KVM satisfy your needs?

IIRC VirtualBox requires kernel mods. Therefore, you would have to create your own images 😅 in which said kernel mod is included. FWIW, both uBlue's templates and BlueBuild do a wonderful job at streamlining this process.

Or..., as alluded before, you don't necessarily need VirtualBox. But, instead, Qemu/KVM perfectly satisfy your needs. Then, you can just run ujust setup-virtualization. After which you reboot, and you would be good to go.

What's preventing you to install that single package through rpm-ostree?

Unsurprisingly, usage numbers for distros are hard to get due to lack of telemetry and what not.

However, some measurements do exist; like data from ProtonDB. These are used by Boiling Steam for their excellent reports in which some representation regarding usage across distros can be found. Their most recent report can be found here.

Note, however, that the following, as has been excellently touched upon by Boiling Steam, applies:

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS

Since we hear some of the following comments EVERY SINGLE TIME, let’s address them here and now:

• “Duh, it’s not representative of Linux usage in general!”: And nowhere does it claim to be. As often as possible we make it clear this is Linux usage in a gaming context. The usage of Debian and Ubuntu on servers is safe for now, no need to panic.

They offer ovpn configs that I can just add to the Network Manager, but a part of me doesn’t want to give up!

Does running the .run script do substantially and functionally more than putting the ovpn configs in Network Manager?