I feel like inmutable distros are in a quite good state nowadays, and while solutions like bootc and sysexts are not “mainstream” yet, it’s getting there
when it comes to getting non Flatpak packages, things get interesting, there are a lot of options, really
AppImages, statically linked binaries, tarballs, OCI containers, distrobox/toolbx, Homebrew, VMs, Nix even experimental formats like RunImages, AppBundles and FlatImages
if you need some non-system level package, you’ll have a way to use it yet, still it seems sort of chaotic “which one should I choose? how will I be able to easily manage them?”
GPM, dbin, Soar, AM… and the list goes on
and it’s okay, the so called cloud native approach is still evolving, so this fragmentation is expected so it’s nice to share opinions about this while we’re living this interesting phase any thoughts?
Hehe, that’s very close to my reaction when I first heard about it 😜. I wasn’t able to find any of the technical details either, so I approached them through one of their community channels and they’ve been very patient and helpful. So, IIUC, they leverage
bootc usr-overlay. But wherebootc usr-overlayis transient, thus making anything installed throughdnfgo away on every reboot. RakuOS has somehow hacked their way to make it persistent instead. For more details, I’d suggest making contact with them. Perhaps you can retrofit their solution to your own system 😉.