There is no much difference, you just install less shit into the system and basically go 100% flatbox.

I found most of info. Using btrfs snapshots in Silverblue is possible, but you need lots of preparations before installing it (like in Fedora Workstation, but even more), and even if you did, it would be pointless, as Silverblue allready does same job with ostree overlays pretty good. Using both is not good idea, unless you really need to break up something). It is possible to layer snapper and use snapshots with home, so you may rollback any file or changes very quick, but I am allready making backups of home dayli with dejadup, everything is saved to cloud and if I mess some files, I can rollback any file any day back. To keep things simple it is really enough. Silverblue is cool 😁

No. I see you are somewhat obsessed with ostree. Think about btrfs like fstree. It is way more powerful. The entire btrfs filesystem is kind an ostree. I used Workstation before Silverblue and I could rollback entire os back to days, without home folder, if I need too. But that does not make it immutable right? There is a btrfs-grub, which allows to rollback to any pinned snapshot. If something goes wrong in Workstation you just rollback.

Edit. As Fedora uses btrfs by default (but you can use ext4 too) I also thought about btrfs rollbacks. I actually forgot to examine it, as Fedora docs say something about it, like they should not be used together, I did not read why exactly.

With btrfs you can do way more, than ostree offer. Like install some package, do something, than just rollback system as nothing happened at all. You can rollback parts of system, like any folder. You may compare differences up to single files. Easy. You can rollback months back! That is what Micro OS about, rollback anything at any time with ease. Common user just do not need it.

How are they similar? Aeon rely on btrfs to work, that is simple and good approach, but less user-friendly? I did not tried it, after comparing Aeon and Silverblue I was confident enough Aeon is not for me. And Vanilla has some complex A/B partitions swapping, like Android does, not sure how it will work, but documentation is really confusing.

I recently switched to Silverblue, somewhat accidentally, as I did not thought immutable distros a mature enough, that was an expirement to dig it myself. Guess what? It is really awesome, I do not watch back to common distros now. I also believe Silverblue is way easier and better for Linux novices, than Mint, which is indeed also good and user-friendly, but future of linux seems to be immutability and flatpaks. There is a KDE variant as well. OpenSUSE has Micro OS with another approach to immutability and Vanilla OS is coming soon with yet one more different approach. I guess there are more allready and there will be more and more.

Fedora Workstation has nice GUI apps store. Fedora Silverblue is even more kiss, Flatpaks based.

Not sure why switching DE is important, but did you tried NixOS? It is not even immutable, it is reproducible, everything is described in a configuration file, changing it changes everything, but in a true way, like it builds everything from a config, I liked how it works, but it is time consuming to learn, search, tinker. I like keeping things simple, Silverblue does it so well for me, I guess switching to common distro is a noway for me now.

Okey, Fedora Silverue is exactly what you describe than? Sure that does not mean Vanilla OS is bad or not needed, indeed it is very interesting and while I am not going to switch, I would consider it, if I were using Mint. Also such uncommon distro is always better, than hundreds of common copycat distros appear 😀

I ignored flatpaks long enough, as everything could be installed as packages, without additional GBs of dependencies/libraries/runtimes of flatpaks, that duplicate the system ones. Recently started using immutable system, which assumes flatpaks is primary way to install apps. I found it is incredibly convenient when all your apps put their data in a single place, easier to backup and system looks clean without bunch of shit, apps create where they want.

The video do not shows it. If I turn all my extensions off my system will look exactly same.

I guess the site is down allready, none of 5 browsers installed could access ķeepass.info

So they just showed some apps in stock gnome shell. Replace vanilla os to other gnome distro and nothing is different.

But that is just profiles, whatever they count will not affect you.

Maybe it looks more complex under the hood, but actually it is easy. And it is incredibly easy as ‘for user’, I am not going back to common distro now. I see no issue to install layered app/packages I need often (rare ones are in toolbox, which is also easy) and casual user won’t even need it.

Edit. I also understand btrfs concept, I used it in workstation, but that is complex thing, common user won’t deal with it.

Thanks, makes sense.

That is what I also read on main page. It is not clear will Firefox package require reboot to be applied.

BUT!

Than you read this in documentation:

abroot allows you to install kernel modules, drivers and other essential packages without compromising the filesystem’s immutability. When a command gets executed in abroot, a transaction gets started in the transactional shell in the second root partition. If the transaction succeeds, the changes are applied using an overlay and synced with the current root on reboot. If the transaction fails, no changes are applied (due to a property known as atomicity). abroot also allows for on-demand transactions using the abroot shell command.

So Firefox is probably not a thing to switch A and B? But what happens if some package is successfully applied, B synced with A, after reboot it did not worked and you can not boot back.

Also both partitions will be minimum 20gb, that’s 40 allready. If you install 5gb package, it is successful, it will install 5gb package again… That’s double time! And No garantee the system will boot. Or it won’t be synced until it boots… Yet it could hang in 3 minuted after ram leak, and both A and B are synced, you will have 3 minutes to fix things after boot. Like uninstall that package. Instead of simple rollback.

IDK I do not get it.

There is a flatpak app SaveDesktop, which saves your desktop config in a file. Like extensions lists and settings, gnome shell and dconf settings, GTK, icons, fonts, themes folders, other flatpak apps list (without settings and data) and also nautilus extensions (but not scripts). Than you can easily load it back, apps will be installed, etc.

They count profiles. If you use sync you will still be counted.

What are updates if it is Debian Sid? Updates to software will replace A and B? Or do you install everything to A and B replaces A only with next OS update?