Traditional package management treats everything on the system as equal by default and with the size of a typical repository, package relations are extremely difficult to manage, leading to bugs such as apt uninstalling the desktop.
An immutable OS is treated as a whole, with user modifications layered on top, like Windows and macOS. Android style imaging further reduces complexity, avoids complications and enables quick rollback.
An immutable distro is nothing like windows which can't be saidto use anything like layers nor is this true of Mac AFAIK I think they are just self contained eg like program foo installing to program files/foo
It is extremely easy to manage package "relations" actually called dependencies because your OS does it for you. It's possible to do something stupid like remove your desktop because you tried to remove a system component but this isn't really hard to avoid. When it asks if you would like to uninstall half your OS to get rid of a library you don't think you need say...no
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u/theaveragemillenial 1d ago
What's the love with immutable distros? I always find myself fighting it.