I Found An Immutable Linux Distro That Never Breaks And Is Effortless To Use

3 days ago

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

ShaniOS is an immutable Linux distribution.
With a blue/green deployment, nan OS will ne'er break.
You tin download and usage ShaniOS for free.

Operating strategy information has ever been a hallmark of Linux. With nan preamble of immutable distributions -- CoreOS, launched successful 2013, was among nan first -- nary different operating strategy could travel adjacent to nan level of information Linux had to offer.

I invited immoderate opportunity to trial a caller immutable Linux distro. Over nan weekend, I discovered ShaniOS.

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ShaniOS is an Arch-based Linux distribution that is immutable and includes Flatpak integration. The cardinal features of this caller OS include:

Immutable halfway pinch blue-green deployment
Flatpak exertion management
Enhanced information pinch AppArmor profiles, firewalled configurations, and full-disk encryption
Performance optimizations specified arsenic move switch record creation and Nvidia GPU support

What is blue-green deployment?

Using Btrfs subvolumes, nan strategy maintains 2 complete strategy states -- branded "blue" and "green." Only 1 authorities is progressive astatine immoderate time, truthful atomic updates and rollbacks tin hap pinch nan highest level of reliability.

For example, if you're utilizing nan bluish environment, updates are applied to nan greenish situation and past tested. You tin past move from nan bluish to nan greenish situation during a reboot. In different words, you will ever person a moving lawsuit of your OS, without fail.

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If thing goes incorrect pinch 1 environment, reboot and move to nan other.

Open a terminal and rumor nan bid sudo shani-deploy and watch nan magic happen. The bid does nan following:

Downloads updates for nan inactive environment.
Applies nan updates without affecting nan progressive environment.
Configures nan bootloader to usage nan updated environment.
Ensures instant rollback capacity successful lawsuit nan update does not activity properly.

Because this is an immutable strategy that leverages nan blue/green approach, applications are managed successful 2 ways:

Flatpak for desktop apps
Containers for improvement apps

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I ran nan sudo shani-deploy command, and it took a full of 7 minutes and 40 seconds. Please statement that I've only been testing nan distribution for a fewer days, truthful location isn't a batch installed. Had I installed a batch of applications and saved a batch of data, that clip would astir apt beryllium considerably longer. However, nan bid ran flawlessly, and I could move from 1 situation to nan different upon nan adjacent reboot.

What ShaniOS is like

You tin download a type of ShaniOS pinch either GNOME aliases KDE Plasma. I went nan KDE Plasma way and recovered nan UI to beryllium rather lovely. The developers person tweaked KDE Plasma truthful that it looks unsocial but still functions very likewise to nan default desktop environment.

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You'll find nan desktop paper successful nan apical near area (as opposed to nan bottommost left), and nan taxable is bully and glassy. The preinstalled exertion database includes Vivaldi, OnlyOffice, Warehouse (for Flatpak app management), KolourPaint, Pods (container management), and more. Although it whitethorn not beryllium an extended database of preinstalled apps, you tin ever motorboat KDE Plasma's Discover app and instal immoderate further package you need. Because Flatpak is baked into Discover, you'll find tons of apps to install.

Outside of nan striking KDE Plasma theming, 1 of nan first things that impressed maine was really accelerated ShaniOS performed. I've utilized galore immutable Linux distributions before, but I don't callback testing 1 that performed arsenic good arsenic this one.

I besides tested nan blue/green environments. While utilizing nan bluish environment, I ran nan sudo shani-deploy command. When nan deploy bid finished, I rebooted and selected nan greenish environment. Everything was flawless. I was moreover alerted to trial nan apps to guarantee they activity arsenic expected -- which they did.

While moving nan greenish environment, I created and saved a record to nan Documents directory. I past ran nan shani-deploy command, only to beryllium alerted that location was a footwear mismatch and that nan strategy expected to footwear bluish but recovered greenish was running.

The perfect distro for caller users

I past remembered that nan OS alerted maine to trial applications to guarantee they work, and past reboot to use everything. I followed nan instructions, and nan changes were applied to nan bluish environment, resulting successful everything being precisely arsenic expected.

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This strategy is really impressive. In fact, ShaniOS has maine reasoning that immutable Linux distributions mightiness beryllium nan perfect action for caller users because they are truthful bulletproof. And pinch nan blue/green deployment scheme, ShaniOS mightiness good beryllium nan champion of nan best.

I highly urge giving this immutable Linux distribution a effort and seeing if it doesn't impressment you arsenic overmuch arsenic it did me. Grab either nan GNOME aliases KDE Plasma edition, instal it connected a spare machine (or arsenic a virtual machine), and acquisition this awesome operating system.