I don’t think it doesn’t add to the Linux community from a technical standpoint, I think it doesn’t bring new users into the community.
As a technical concept, immutable OSes are (imo, an unfortunate) up-and-coming design (although obviously ChromeOS already brought that mainstream in Linux a while ago). But that itself is not a feature that lay users (who it claims to be targeting) are going to care about. Lay users don’t care about how their OS gets updates, or how the mechanisms that make it secure function, because they can’t substantiate those claims anyways. I think it can be difficult for us technical users to conceptualize the utter lack of interest that lay users have in the “how” of computers. They want a shiny, already-working device. If they have to install something themselves, it’s already lost most of them.
I’m not sure how they’re marketed, but if I were to convert family to a linux distro I’d want something immutable or at least containerized so they can’t mess it up no matter what weird things they click. Otherwise I’d expect to become their permanent IT with my ssh keys preinstalled.
I don’t think it doesn’t add to the Linux community from a technical standpoint, I think it doesn’t bring new users into the community. As a technical concept, immutable OSes are (imo, an unfortunate) up-and-coming design (although obviously ChromeOS already brought that mainstream in Linux a while ago). But that itself is not a feature that lay users (who it claims to be targeting) are going to care about. Lay users don’t care about how their OS gets updates, or how the mechanisms that make it secure function, because they can’t substantiate those claims anyways. I think it can be difficult for us technical users to conceptualize the utter lack of interest that lay users have in the “how” of computers. They want a shiny, already-working device. If they have to install something themselves, it’s already lost most of them.
I see now. You made some good points. Indeed, the targeted userbase doesn’t care about how the system works, so they may have a conflict in there,
I’m not sure how they’re marketed, but if I were to convert family to a linux distro I’d want something immutable or at least containerized so they can’t mess it up no matter what weird things they click. Otherwise I’d expect to become their permanent IT with my ssh keys preinstalled.