GNOME OS team is working to alleviate some of the limitations of immutable, image-based Linux variants

There’s a ton of interest in immutable, image-based versions of various Linux distributions, since they offer a number of benefits that make them a good fit for some users. Updates can’t really go wrong, rollback is easy, application management through Flatpak is more in line with systems like Android and iOS – they may not be advantages sought by everyone, but they clearly are by some. Still, there are also a number of annoying limitations, most notably around testing nightly releases of Flatpaks, testing system components, and installing command-line tools.

The team behind GNOME OS is addressing these issues. The first thing they’re working on in something they’ve preliminarily call Test Center, which makes it much easier to install nightly releases of Flatpaks alongside their regular versions. This is something you can already do today, but the flow is cumbersome and not exactly user-friendly; with Test Center, developers will be able to share a direct link to install test releases.

They intend to use this same Test Center for testing system components:

Our idea here is to use the same “Test Center” app mentioned above for installing and managing experiments at the system level as well. Similar to Flatpak bundles generated in CI, we generate system extension images (sysext) for every merge request. You can install experiments from a sharing link, and they will apply as a sysext over your existing system. Because those images are non-destructive overlays, you can always go back to the original system.

↫ Jordan, Jonas, and Tobias

The last and final issue is that of command-line tools, something Flatpak is simply not designed for. On this front, the GNOME OS team states they are working on a solution as well, but they’re not quite ready to go into much more detail at this point.

Regardless, these are very welcome improvements.