Look, I’ve only been a Linux user for a couple of years, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that we’re not afraid to tinker. Most of us came from Windows or macOS at some point, ditching the mainstream for better control, privacy, or just to escape the corporate BS. We’re the people who choose the harder path when we think it’s worth it.
Which is why I find it so damn interesting that atomic distros haven’t caught on more. The landscape is incredibly diverse now - from gaming-focused Bazzite to the purely functional philosophy of Guix System. These distros couldn’t be more different in their approaches, but they all share this core atomic DNA.
These systems offer some seriously compelling stuff - updates that either work 100% or roll back automatically, no more “oops I bricked my system” moments, better security through immutability, and way fewer update headaches.
So what gives? Why aren’t more of us jumping on board? From my conversations and personal experience, I think it boils down to a few things:
Our current setups already work fine. Let’s be honest - when you’ve spent years perfecting your Arch or Debian setup, the thought of learning a whole new paradigm feels exhausting. Why fix what isn’t broken, right?
The learning curve seems steep. Yes, you can do pretty much everything on atomic distros that you can on traditional ones, but the how is different. Instead of apt install whatever and editing config files directly, you’re suddenly dealing with containers, layering, or declarative configs. It’s not necessarily harder, just… different.
The docs can be sparse. Traditional distros have decades of guides, forum posts, and StackExchange answers. Atomic systems? Not nearly as much. When something breaks at 2am, knowing there’s a million Google results for your error message is comforting.
I’ve been thinking about this because Linux has overcome similar hurdles before. Remember when gaming on Linux was basically impossible? Now we have the Steam Deck running an immutable SteamOS (of all things!) and my non-Linux friends are buying them without even realizing they’re using Linux. It just works.
So I’m genuinely curious - what’s keeping YOU from switching to an atomic distro? Is it specific software you need? Concerns about customization? Just can’t be bothered to learn new tricks?
Your answers might actually help developers focus on the right pain points. The atomic approach makes so much sense on paper that I’m convinced it’s the future - we just need to figure out what’s stopping people from making the jump today.
So what would it actually take to get you to switch? I’m all ears.
In my opinion, if you are a regular user then atomic is the way, but for me as a developer it was unnecessary friction when trying to setup things like SDKs, environments, emulators and just dealing with dependencies. When I did the switch to fedora, I did try the atomic KDE version, but I didn’t last long, switched to the plain KDE spin 2 days after.
The mentioned guix or more popular nixos arguably handle this better than traditional distros
Same reason I don’t do a number of things with Linux - I don’t have time to play fuck-fuck with tools lacking proper documentation and no clearly defined use-case, capabilities, and limitations.
The primary barrier for me: I’m not convinced that it’s a good idea.
There is not a single reason why I should. Snapper gives me the same ability to easily roll back in case of errors. Beyond that I don’t see what makes atomic distros so great.
I don’t want an “incredibly diverse landscape,” at least not that I have to actually understand and choose between. I want there to be a single set of opinionated best practices that creates a reasonable “default” choice.
In other words, I’ll switch when an atomic distro gets more popular than Ubuntu.
I wouldn’t.
So what would it actually take to get you to switch? I’m all ears.
Nothing. I switched a few years ago. On Mint, from Mac.
What prevented me of doing it for many years was my own fears—it must be difficult, it’s too complex/geeky for me (hint: it was not)—and my own habits as I had been using Apple computers since the early/mid 80s. After my switch, what almost got me to switch back to Mac was all the ‘moral’ codes of conduct I saw popping out. I mean, what the fuck was wrong with people telling users what they could and could not do in a very similar way proprietary software with their EULA were doing!? thinking that if I had to deal with that same level of shit why not simply keep using a Mac? But then, I realized those were only a vocal minority.
I don’t miss much from macOS, beside Spotlight. This was so useful and so well integrated into the system.
Linux Mint isn’t an atomic distro. This isn’t a post about switching to Linux in general from another OS; this is a post about switching from a “normal” Linux (to the extent such a thing exists) to a particular kind of Linux that handles updates in a specific, nontraditional way.
He said nothing. Then he explained that all he had was a bunch of unfounded fears and once he gave it a shot, it wasn’t that hard. i.e. training wheels not required, so nothing.
I’m still a relative newcomer and switched fully in 2023 after having zero experience with Linux before that year.
I feel like I’ve only just gotten comfy with regular Linux and don’t feel like reworking my setup around the quirks of an atomic distro.
And if you count the Steamdecks “SteamOS” then the only time I’ve remembered it isn’t standard Arch is when it’s “atomicness” is forcing me to do workarounds for something that I can easily do on my Arch based desktop.
But I’d give NixOS a try if their docs page didn’t block my VPN when literally no other FOSS or Corpo site does…
It sounds like you’re including NixOS in this category so I guess I have switched.
I also tried Fedora Silverblue a bit, and it seemed to me that ostree distros are built on a cool idea supported by compromises I didn’t like:
Some stuff doesn’t work in Flatpak sandboxing - at least not yet. One example that comes to mind is Firefox integration with the desktop 1Password app. Maybe I could make this work by tinkering with Flatseal, but when install the native packages in NixOS this interaction just works.
I don’t want my CLI tools in a container running a different distro. For example if I’m using Distrobox to set up a dev environment that’s installing a distro with traditional package management to get around not being able to install packages natively in the host OS. I get that Distrobox enables isolated dev environments for different projects. But for that use case I think Nix devshells are more flexible, robust, and performant.
Nix also has its problems - in particular the usual complaint that the documentation is not comprehensive enough to match the complexity of the system.
