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Bahman M. (@bahmanm@mastodon.social)
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/etc can’t be edited on immutable distros

False on at least Fedora Atomic^[1]^, NixOS^[2]^ and openSUSE Aeon^[3]^..

Which 'immutable' distros are you referring to?


  1. On Fedora Atomic, changing /etc is literally identical to how it goes any other distro; or at least 1-to-1 as on traditional Fedora. The bonus is that a pristine copy of the original /etc is kept inside a sub-directory of /usr. Furthermore, all changes compared to the pristine copy are kept track of.
  2. On NixOS, changes have to be applied through configuration.nix. Though, regardless, it's effectively possible to edit and populate /etc like it is on other distros.
  3. It's explicitly mentioned that /etc does not belong to the immutable base.

Fedora Atomic allowed it recently afaik. I'm always forgetting this. And NixOS is not immutable because of R/W FS.

No sorry, Fedora Atomic has allowed changes to /etc since at least 2019. Regarding NixOS, the consensus is that it's an immutable distro. The immutability of /nix/store/ suffices for this.

Your notion on Fedora Atomic was false. So, what other 'immutable' distro did you have in mind when making that comment?

Please stop harassing me. And idk. I saw that issue but at this point I think it was just misinformation.

Thank you for your honesty! I only intend for the truth to prevail and/or to reach mutual understanding. So please don't feel attacked. If somehow I came off as such, my apologies; that has never been my intent.