I found an immutable Linux distro that never breaks and is effortless to use

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

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

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

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

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

Immutable halfway with blue-green deployment
Flatpak exertion management
Enhanced information with AppArmor profiles, firewalled configurations, and full-disk encryption
Performance optimizations specified arsenic dynamic swap record instauration and Nvidia GPU support

What is blue-green deployment?

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

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

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If thing goes incorrect with 1 environment, reboot and power to the other.

Open a terminal and contented the bid sudo shani-deploy and ticker the magic happen. The bid does the following:

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

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

Flatpak for desktop apps
Containers for improvement apps

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I ran the sudo shani-deploy command, and it took a full of 7 minutes and 40 seconds. Please enactment that I've lone been investigating the organisation for a fewer days, truthful determination 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, the bid ran flawlessly, and I could power from 1 situation to the different upon the adjacent reboot.

What ShaniOS is like

You tin download a mentation of ShaniOS with either GNOME oregon KDE Plasma. I went the KDE Plasma way and recovered the UI to beryllium rather lovely. The developers person tweaked KDE Plasma truthful that it looks unsocial but inactive functions precise likewise to the default desktop environment.

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You'll find the desktop paper successful the apical near country (as opposed to the bottommost left), and the 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 bundle you need. Because Flatpak is baked into Discover, you'll find tons of apps to install.

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

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

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

The perfect distro for caller users

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

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This strategy is truly impressive. In fact, ShaniOS has maine reasoning that immutable Linux distributions mightiness beryllium the perfect enactment for caller users due to the fact that they are truthful bulletproof. And with the blue/green deployment scheme, ShaniOS mightiness good beryllium the champion of the best.

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

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