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?


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
dnfis overlayed persistently over thebootc-managed base system.