Manjaro Immutable Out Now for Community Testing

I think that is distant enough we could still get away with it.

If I remember things correctly, when @philm initially coined the idea of a locked-down version a few years ago, he called it Manjaro Solid.

I donā€™t think that name would already be in use, but what do I know, Iā€™m just a lowly, lowly cook moderatorĀ¹. :stuck_out_tongue:


Ā¹ A :cookie: for who gets the reference. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Do i understand this right, that Manjaro Immutable is like installing a Manjaro without the option to change or customising. Like a install with active write protection?

But for what is that good for?

Is that like a Edward snowden spy recommendation thing? That no one can snopping around and can find unique information what the last user did do at his PC?

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This is pretty much what chrome os is. Or android. Without root. Me personally - i would not use it, but i guess there are customers for a system with 0 maintanance, even if that means no control over it too. Hell, that even sounds like windows.

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This tech is useful if you have devices like a gaming handheld or a business which wants to ease the maintenance efforts of their employees. For developers there are many benefits to have a solid base system and containers seamlessly integrated into the OS for several platforms like Arch, Debian, Fedora and others.

And if you fire up pacman, the system will ask you a simple question if you really want to unlock the filesystem to install the legacy way.

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This OS distribution method is exactly what I was working on earlier - it is unique because it uses a archive of a btrfs filesystem - it takes some time to download but 2G is nothing compared to what Apple do.

When Apple deploys a new OS - the do it in a similar fashion albeit not btrfs and a much larger image.

Yesterday I updated my macBook - 14G - I didnā€™t time the update process - but it took quite a while.

I donā€™t know if Solid is the word I would use about btrfs - I think the oriiginal phrase - immutable is much better describing this method of distribution.

The wall I hit again and again was how to deploy Nvidia.

With this method it is possible to have a specialized base image for Nvidia.

It is even possible for endusers to, easily - relatively speaking - create a specialized base for their specific hardware.

@dennis1248

  • Arch is a mountain - looking at the A and the association is also present in their logo.
  • Manjaro the name of a mountain - as I recall Kili is a general word for mountain.
  • Rock is a solid foundation - describing what the intent of the result - yet - with the right tools and knowledge - you shape into whatever you like.

Ohh - you name it - call it an extended kernel - a base system for x86_64 architecture which works no matter the hardware ā€¦

If you put something on top and it doesnā€™t work - you know it is your own doing.

It will create a new type of system - where you can always trust the base - and what ever you experiment with you just flip a switch - and you are stable again.

I see this as a major step in the right direction - there is a reason why Apple has so much success with their brand and this could be huge for Manjaro.

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Android updates are made in a similar fashion - A and B partitions, the other one gets updated and rebooted into on success.

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Here we have filesystem images more or less. A simple configuration tells how many of these you want to keep. Normally the one you are running and another one. However you can crank that up to 100+ if you want to do so ā€¦

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Great to see immutable setup being explored! Iā€™ve yet to try any one of those available, but I think Iā€™ll start with this at some point.

Inspired by that: let me propose Manjaro Granite. Would that stick?

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Another idea

TerraForm

This would signal base component and it would also signal something to build on, shaping a system.

But that is already in use by terraform.io

But as terraform is a beginning - Genesis could be used or GeneSys perhaps - nah also in useā€¦

Foundation is as viable as this also describes the foundation - much like terraform and rock.

According some dictionaries

  • stereĆ³s - greek meaning solid in the durable sense.
  • solidus - latin meaning solid in the reliable sense.

Or just Kibo

Kibo peak at the top of Kilimanjaro is the highest point in Africa.

From Mount Kilimanjaro - Wikipedia

  • Kibo - dormant volcano
  • Mawenzi - extinct volcano
  • Shira - extinct volcano
  • Uhuru Peak is the highest summit on Kiboā€™s crater rim
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I like Granite (because it will be rock solid) and Kibo because it is easy, and a bit of a change from the Startrek stuff, and in the mountain semantic.

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Staying with the green - there is lot of green gemstones to choose from

  • Emerald
  • Jade
  • Maw Sit Sit
  • Alexandrite
  • Malachite
  • Apatite
  • Chrysoprase
  • Garnet
  • Sapphire
  • Amazonite
  • Chrysoberyl
  • Prasiolite
  • Peridot
  • Turquoise
  • Chrysocolla
  • Chrome Diopside
  • Diaspore
  • Moldavite
  • Prehnite
  • Hiddenite
  • Agate
  • Green Tourmaline
  • Green Topaz
  • Green Fluorite
  • Green Jasper
  • Green Opal
  • Green Calcite
  • Green Moonstone
  • Green Spinel
  • Green Aventurine
  • Green Diamond

source: Green Gemstones: List of 31 Green Gems and Their Meanings | Gem Rock Auctions

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These systems are interesting for people who want it to ā€œjust workā€.

Updates can be tested before they are released. And should an update have a bug it is easy for us to find and troubleshoot because everyone is running a near identical software configuration.

On top of that updates can run entirely in the background with zero user interaction, and when they run it will not impact the current user session. This is not implemented right now, but it is on the list, this is a fairly standard feature for most immutables.

The security benefits are minimal, it may only protect you traditional malware, any targeted attack which is immutable aware can easily work around the locked disk.

A good suggestion! I will add it to the list.

Again, whizzy cutesy names will become a marketing nightmare once you go past two versions. Look at what happened to Fedora. Do not fall into the same trap and have to backpedal like they did.

Manjaro Atomic Gnome
Manjaro Atomic KDE

Do you believe that people are so dumb that they cannot tell the difference between Manjaro and Fedora?

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Sounds good.

Immutable edition is going to have version numbers or is going to be a ā€œinstall what you install, once updated is always the lastā€?

This is amazing news, now Iā€™m ashamed for recently pondering leaving Manjaro behind. :smiley:

As a programmer Iā€™m absolutely terrified that almost anything can just modify my system without telling me. I want I, as the physical admin of my machines, to be unable to modify the system (without several big warnings and confirmations)!

Want to manually get the latest Golang because you donā€™t want to wait two weeks? Cool, but thatā€™s another layer on top of the one you booted from ā€“ you canā€™t change that one.

I love the idea of having throwaway layers between boot sessions ā€“ or even in the same session, controlled manually.

Iā€™ll be reading on the underlying technology soon but in the meantime can anybody tell me if we can get full diffs between layers / images? Full list of paths is what I have in mind.

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That was answered beforehand :slight_smile:

this list the package differences between the available test systems

You can even roll you own images to base upon - the images are compressed archives of btrfs filesystems - ready to import and - they are provided from a https endpoint - so easy to host on a local machine.

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Are you planing on moving completely to this new distro or the traditional manjaro will still be supported? Even more important to me since i am using xfce and the new manjaro will not have it, it seems. Aaaand i have not used btrfs before, so it will essentially be a completely new experience to me (and i am not sure i will want this exact experience if i am forced to distro hop).

They already confirmed that its additional isoā€¦ i think the most people (myself including) in this community will leave Manjaro if they would replace the original Manjaro distro.

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We do not know yet. Most likely it will just track normal Manjaro stable.

We recommend containers for this. Distrobox specifically, it is an easy to use abstraction layer on top of Podman which nicely integrates it with your system.

It can diff, the current diff implementation was only added a week ago, I may still change it as the current implementation has no way of telling what image variant you are running, so it will assume the default.

The diff works by pulling package lists from the repos and comparing those.
https://download.manjaro.org/arkdep/test-manjaro-kde/8da5433c34d8633d686c0c6cdc8b0d7d0c77d0d5f7.pkgs

It does it using Bash, so it is not super fast. And I am sure the current implementation can be optimized a tiny bit.

They will continue living side by side.

It takes 10 minutes to build an XFCE config, someone just has to get around to building it.

Ideally you should not notice any difference.

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