The developers of the Manjaro Linux distribution, based on Arch Linux and targeted at beginner users, have announced the start of testing a new experimental build called 'Manjaro Immutable'. This build features a base system delivered as a single monolithic image, mounted in read-only mode and updated entirely in an atomic manner. The size of the boot image is 1.7 GB. It only supports booting in UEFI mode, both on x86_64 hardware and in virtualization and emulation systems such as VirtualBox and QEMU. After testing is completed, the build is expected to receive official status as a variant of Manjaro.
To create monolithic system images based on the Arch Linux package base, as well as to install, maintain, and organize rollbacks to previous states, the arkdep toolkit developed by the Arkane Linux project is used. This toolkit is written in Bash and serves as a wrapper over GNU Coreutils, wget, curl, and Systemd. Btrfs is used as the filesystem, and Btrfs subvolumes are employed to switch between the active system image and the loaded update.
Programs are suggested to be installed as packages in Flatpak format (containers created using Podman and Distrobox are used for execution). Additionally, there is an option to disable change locking in the root partition and use the default package manager pacman, but packages installed this way will be lost after the next system update and will need to be reinstalled.
To install the update, the command 'sudo arkdep deploy' should be used, and to assess the changes in the proposed update — 'arkdep diff'. By default, the GNOME desktop environment is offered, but a system image with KDE is available separately, which can be installed with the command 'sudo arkdep deploy test-manjaro-kde'. If desired, users can create an image with their own customizations using available templates.
Source: opennet.ru
