pyssla

during the process I discovered that their kernel parameters were being reset with every kernel update

That’s pretty horrid. They ought to have fixed that since. Right?

Alright, but you seem to be a (relatively) early adapter then. Do you still use it? Or have you pivoted since?

Fam, I loathe saying this, but -please- if you desire engagement, then at least put some honest effort into proofreading your writings before posting them. I’m just assuming stuff at this point because I can barely grasp your intent/writing. *sigh*

Why do atomic distros which are supposed to me more stable, superior to some degree immutable environments lack good backup options? You can hack things together and there are somewhat installable tools. Like timeshift or etc etc.

Which distros even come by default -so installed OOTB- with “good backup options”? Which atomic distros is this statement even based on?

But it seems they place a lot more emphasis on rolling back poor updates in the event than total system backups.

Because their atomicity barely goes beyond updates. The ‘atomic’ in “atomic distros” mostly describes how its updates are atomic; i.e. the system either updates successfully or doesn’t update at all. Thus, by design, we have two possible states after an update: a ‘successfully’ updated system or a ‘failed’ update resulting in the same state as the previous. Atomic distros aren’t smart enough to catch all ‘breakage’ occurred by ‘successful’ updates. As such, most of these breakages will only show them after trying to boot into updated system. Deleting/erasing the previous known good state without verifying that the new/upcoming state works well is foolish. Especially on a distro that’s got robust updates otherwise. Hence, the functionality of rollbacks on updates is almost trivially done/applied to atomic distros, as it (almost) follows by design.

So, what I’m interested in is the following:

• Are you familiar with the notion of stateless systems? Is this (perhaps) what you’re (actually) seeking?

By default it you should have true backups then layer in rollbacks. Not the other way around. Am I missing something?

I think my previous paragraph should be enlightening in this regard. If you disagree (or something/otherwise), then please feel free to elaborate why you think so. Btw, what do you even mean with "true backups?

Thanks for clarifying!

One of the breakages was caused by an expired signature or something from Universal Blue, which hit all users. I’m surprised that one doesn’t get talked about more.

Yeah, this was a big one. Though, I have to give them credit for how they handled the situation. I believe a lot of other projects got a lot to learn from them in that aspect.

One of them was caused by Bazzite changing how Steam itself is handled and not transitioning my system over properly.

Was this the transition from the (so-called) bazzite-arch distrobox to layering Steam into the image?

Was this caused by layering?

What distro did this happen on?

How long ago did you install it?

One was it being immutable, meaning for any software that wasn’t in the flatpak store, I have to spin up a container running a mutable version and use that.

Sorry for being that guy, but please allow me to nitpick the above:

• Bazzite’s founder and lead maintainer doesn’t refer to Bazzite as immutable^[1].
• Bazzite supports a lot more than just Flatpak and pet containers. And that list isn’t even complete.

my only real point is that looking problems up on a small distro is harder

While I agree that Aurora definitely is a small ‘distro’^[2], I’m not comfortable to refer to Bazzite as a small project. Both Steam’s own metrics as well as ProtonDB’s suggest that it holds a moderate chunk. Sure, with just over 25k users it isn’t quite comparable to (say) Fedora’s 300k+ user base. But it definitely ain’t a slouch either.

As for the looking problems up part, honestly, if a quick search doesn’t help ya, you should just go over to their Discord or Discourse and ask the friendly maintainers and community for help/support. Heck, even their subreddit seems to be doing a commendable job.

but I guess its a rather small distro that not many people know?

It’s true that it’s not as well-established as many of the other distros discussed here; it probably has like 1k users or so. Which is quite literally just a small fraction of Fedora KDE’s over a 120k user base. Granted, it’s a relatively new distro built on Fedora’s latest/‘future’ tech. Usage numbers should follow eventually^[1].

Thankfully, that same tech enables Aurora (and other projects like it) to be very robust and reliable; tangibly more so than the more popular ‘traditional’ alternatives. I assume you’ll come to cherish and value this reliability, especially as stability seems to be a concern of yours.

This was originally intended as a longer comment, but the previous draft unfortunately blinked out of existence… Though, I’m more than willing to shed some light on the distros discussed below if you’re interested.

Or any other Good KDE Distros out there.

I’m surprised that no one else has mentioned them yet. Thus, for the sake of completeness, consider Aurora and Bazzite. It’s what I would personally install/recommend for/to relatives/friends that would like to make the switch to Linux.

Because, and I quote:

“Warning: AUR packages are user-produced content. These PKGBUILDs are completely unofficial and have not been thoroughly vetted. Any use of the provided files is at your own risk.”

Thankfully, there’s a mailing list that covers issues like these. Heck, OP’s PSA was probably originally propagated from there.