My feedback so far is: POS. I cannot figure out how to do anything in this. Everthing is different from every other linux distro yet there is no documentation on how to do anything. I cannot even rely on chatGPT to be able to give me anything useful. Seriously, this has been the worst linux experience ever.
#For beginners? Yeah right.
exotic creek
snow ore
Immutable LInux distros are still a fairly new phenomenon, thats true. And due to their nature they don't work the same way a mutable one does, making it mostly impossible to blindly follow instructions for another distro. And yes, the documentation for VanillaOS is very sparse at the moment.
I think though, immutable OSes are a very beginner friendly concept in general. E.g. it's what I would install on my grandpa's PC so he can't mess it up by accident too easily.
But yes, as soon as one wants to tinker around with the system and/or want to do more complex stuff than using Flatpak apps, there are basically only two ways: a) tinker with another, mutable distro or b) actually learn how things work in this particular distro to do the stuff here. The last one obviously needs much more effort though.
I actually am still evaluating for myself, whether or not immutable systems are really the right thing for me personally.
Hint: I am not in any way affiliated with Vanilla OS. Just an individual in this community.
exotic creek
I think those are all good points. I'm actually trying vanilla cuz I'm looking for an alternative to Linux Mint . I have tacoed my entire machine once too often with mint . There's often no way back except reinstall and lose a lot of time But I suppose for VanillaOS in general it's the lack of documentation. I can't find out how to do even basic things.
snow ore
For most tinkering you will just need to use a custom image. There you can basically do everything like you are used to, just with the addition that you need to write it in a script and run it in the cloud (GitHub). If this succeeds, and only if it succeeds (which is the nice part), you will have a new image you can upgrade to. And even if the setup went through but your system still messes up, you have the option to jump back
thats actually pretty neat
I'm currently not doing much in my image but if you want, you can have a look at https://github.com/marvin-te/vanilla But you can find lots of other exambles by searching for 'vanilla os', 'vib' or similar on Github
note that you will most likely not want to use another users custom image (including mine) on your machine. Every change they are making in the future might break things on your side. Also this would give just some random dude on the internet permission to flush whatever the heck he wants on your machine. No cool.
Instead I'd recommend creating your own image from the official https://github.com/Vanilla-OS/custom-image repo and if you want to have something someone else has: read what he did, understand what he did, then repeat what he did.
bleak hollow
My feedback so far is: POS. I cannot figure out how to do anything in this. E...
I have similar feelings – despite having a fairly large development team, the system lacks proper documentation. Additionally, many things are unclear or missing – issues like the firewall, security, or privacy are left as they are by default in Gnome, which means they are practically unhandled. The system is still far from being user-friendly, and if the developers don't address this, it will just become another curiosity among the immutable distros. I was hoping to stay on this distro a bit longer, but unfortunately, I can't even find information on when my system received a patch or when the software was last updated. I'm waiting for Elementary 8.0 and making the switch.