A few days ago the Manjaro Linux developers unveiled through a blog post the news that They have started testing for a new experimental version called "Manjaro Immutable", which introduces an innovative approach by distributing the base system as a monolithic image mounted in read-only mode.
In the announcement the developers mention as such that The release is experimental and does not represent a final version. Therefore, there is no guarantee of support. The primary goal is to gather community feedback on the technology behind Manjaro Immutable.
Developed by Arkdep of the Arkane Linux project, this exciting new variant of Manjaro is available for public testing right now!
The goal of this release is to gather community feedback on the technology that powers Manjaro Immutable.
Main features of Manjaro Immutable
For the part Of the mentioned features of Manjaro Immutable, The following are found:
- Base system read-only: The base system image is mounted in read-only mode, which means that no permanent changes can be made to it. This protects the system from possible corruption and ensures that it can always be returned to a known, stable state.
- Atomic upgrades: System updates are done atomically, meaning they are applied all at once or not at all, avoiding unstable intermediate states.
- Boot Compatibility- The current image (alpha) only supports booting in UEFI mode, both on x86_64 hardware and virtualization systems such as VirtualBox and QEMU.
- Arkdep: For system management, the arkdep tool is offered, a set of tools developed by Arkane Linux. arkdep is intended to take care of the installation, maintenance and rollback of the system to previous states. Arkdep is written in Bash and uses basic GNU utilities, along with wget, curl, and Systemd.
- Btrfs Usage: For the file system part, the choice was Btrfs along with the Btrfs subvolumes that are used to manage the different versions of the system. It is mentioned that the choice of Btrfs is because it allows you to easily switch between the active image and any updates that have been downloaded.
- Flatpak and sandboxes: As for the packaging, the choice for the additional programs that are installed, by default the Flatpak format will be used, and for development environments or specific applications, containers managed with Podman and Distrobox can be used. It is mentioned that the choice of this is because this keeps the base system intact and secure, while allowing flexibility in applications and development environments.
- Optional use of Pacman: Although the system root is read-only, users can temporarily disable this blocking and use Pacman, Arch Linux's standard package manager, to install additional software. However, any packages installed this way will be lost after the next system update and will need to be reinstalled.
System administration
As already mentioned, system administration can be performed using arkdep commands. For example, to install an update, you use the command:
sudo arkdep deploy
To compare the proposed update with the current system, you can use:
arkdep diff
In order to install a package, for example if you want to change the GNOME desktop environment (which is the default environment) you can install a version with KDE using:
sudo arkdep deploy test-manjaro-kde
Finally, it is worth mentioning that users have the option to create custom system images using predefined templates, allowing them to adapt Manjaro Immutable to their specific needs.
Last but not least, it is worth emphasizing that Manjaro Immutable is currently in an alpha state and the recommendation is that it only be used under a virtual machine or on computers intended for testing, since its developers do not recommend the system for daily use, much less for production environments.
If you are interested in testing the system, you should know that the image size is 1.7 GB and a minimum of 32 GB of storage is required, 64 GB or more is recommended.
Interested in learning more about it, you can consult the details in the following link.