Mat, assuming you do end up setting up an immutable system, I would be interested in a review, once you have practical experience. It sounds like it would meet your use case needs, whereas it did not seem that way for me, but it doesn’t mean I’m not interested in the experiences of others. I’ve been one to say for decades that one solution simply does not suit every situation. Enterprise mainframe systems, for instance, are outstanding, secure, and powerful for their use case, but they are cumbersome to use for those who are constantly on the move. When I was flying across the country, then halfway across the Pacific Ocean for my first trip to Hawaii, I saw a lot of very nice looking laptop systems. A few of the ones that had really nice displays, and their owners used them to watch movies, conduct business during the trip, and communicate with others. Those laptops were perfect for that scenario, but most of them probably wouldn’t be ideal for me on a limited budget. The point is that different services, different systems and different methodologies have their place. While it may be just right for certain scenarios, it’s a clumsy or frustrating experience in others. Those cool mobile laptops might not be best to run a payroll or personnel system for instance.
Taking this back to immutable distros, I do hope that someone here does have a useful scenario where these work out, and I’ll love to read about those experiences when a person who can take positive advantage of this methodology is able to share with us. I’m looking forward to finding out the best experiences at that time.
Hey, Brian. Don’t hold your breath for a review. 
I was just thinking out loud that one might be able to take bare Debian, which already checks off question 2 (stability) and 3 (set and forget, mostly), and add something to handle 1 (roll back). Going for read only protection or containers (questions 4 & 5) seems more trouble than it’s worth for my (personal use) purposes. Were I to provide services to clients (for example), or worse, provide clients with the ability to change things, then core immutability would help keep me from wondering if I’ve missed something. Final thought while writing: if immutability could be turned off while a core component was being intentionally modified then I’d be more inclined to consider it for my use.
Yeah, I see your point Mat. If you want stability, a straight Debian system can do it without having to experiment at all in immutable software. Containers are another topic and object with a name that’s suspect.
I’d rather design an organization and configuration, as you suggest, that’s specific to a project or a client. Immutable is a technology looking for a market. I don’t see much of a market for it myself.
Yeah, I’m not sure what I’d call it. I used Kickstart for CentOS systems, but I switched to Ubuntu a while back and never fully automated that. I also haven’t created a VM in a while.
For my Macs, I have a setup of scripts I run that do a lot of setup – they configure Finder, Safari, the NFS automounter, and some other things.
For all of my Unix systems, I share my shell config using git, and I absolutely love that setup. It’s the only way I can keep all of my systems usable and synchronized.
I’m currently testing Bluefin
Except for Gnome, I like it so far—I can’t say much more than that yet 
@hydn you had stated earlier that you decided you dislike immutable distros because they are locked down. What are your thoughts on vanillaos? I have the same feelings but am still curious about vanillaos with its apx system that seems like it would help with that locked down issue. To me, it’s the most interesting immutable os.
Hi @Boggle thanks for joining in on the conversions. Good question.
I wouldn’t say I dislike immutable distros. It’s more that after spending time with them, I realized they don’t really fit what attracts me to Linux in the first place.
A big part of Linux for me is the freedom to modify the system however I want. Immutable systems intentionally put some guardrails around that, which for some users and use cases, makes sense for stability, but it starts to feel restrictive for the way I like to use Linux.
That said, Vanilla OS is one of the more interesting projects in that space. The apx system is clever because it tries to solve one of the big friction points by letting you pull packages from different ecosystems without touching the base system. So even though immutable systems aren’t really my thing, Vanilla OS is one I’ve been impressed by, but still won’t use. 
Another distro that caught my attention recently is openSUSE Slowroll. Not immutable, but it feels like a nice middle ground. If someone is curious about the ideas behind immutable systems but isn’t sure they want to go all the way, Slowroll looks like a good compromise.
So immutable distros aren’t really where I landed personally, but projects like Vanilla OS and Slowroll are definitely interesting and worth checking out.
@Boggle and @hydn Thanks for stating your position again. I’m in a similar place, but I have a different “take” on my opinion. While immutable distributions are not my daily use tool of choice, I am definitely interested in them, and I may find a spot somewhere to check them out. Actually, based on the definition, I DO have a few immutable systems and they are a part of my overall setup: 1) I have a Chromebook; while I don’t use it every day, I consider it an important asset in my collection. Android is also considered an immutable system; that I use every day. With that in mind, while these aren’t my Linux distros of choice they are part of my regular “arsenal” - I like diversity, and I like no one single point of failure; by using different hardware AND different systems, that’s covered well, so I thought I’d highlight this - hadn’t really thought much about that previously.