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?

  • EchoDelta_9@programming.dev
    2·
    3 days ago

    Unsure whether it fits with the rest, but I’d argue it is an innovative and very compelling ‘standard’ that is competing with everything else mentioned in this thread.

    So, the basic idea is as follows: if it is so difficult to deal with the loss of the main package manager found on the mutable/traditional variant, why don’t we pursuit ways to not lose it in the first place and thus try to make it coexist (somehow) with the atomic model. Enter RakuOS’s hybrid design in which everything installed through dnf is overlayed persistently over the bootc-managed base system.

    • overcast@lemmy.zipOP
      2·
      19 hours ago

      wowie, that’s a really cool approach however I wasn’t able to find technical details

      • EchoDelta_9@programming.dev
        1·
        19 hours ago

        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 where bootc usr-overlay is transient, thus making anything installed through dnf go 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 😉.

  • overcast@lemmy.zipOP
    1·
    4 days ago

    did you know about pkgforge repo? it’s an interesting project however, even package managers for portable formats are sort of fragmented

    I don’t like depending on GitHub so I don’t consider GPM, Soar and AM seem too similar… and I still have to understand what makes dbin stand out