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Immutable Linux for low end PCs? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by garold@lemmy.world to c/linux@programming.dev

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I have a laptop with 4 GB of RAM that I'd like to use for occasional comic book reading. (It's a touch screen 2-in-1 laptop that folds over into a tablet configuration.) I use Bazzite on my main PC and I love how low maintenance it is. Are there any immutable/atomic distros that featue XFCE, LXDE, or some other low RAM friendly desktop? Or, should I just layer XFCE or LXDE on top of UBlue Core or make my own image or something? Thanks!

EDIT: Thanks everyone for the feedback and quality discussion! It looks like the best options for immutable have a learning curve or time commitment attached (e.g. NixOS). For a daily driver computer it might be worth the trouble to learn, but in this case I decided to just go with standard Fedora XFCE for now.

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[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes, but as I said, on a 4GB budget, this matters quite a bit. I run thousands of edge devices on a custom distro with similar constraints, and it adds up quickly. It's not that it's insurmountable or anything, but I'm answering the question asked and not getting into the particulars. It's just a known fact.

[–] dgdft@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

FWIW I switched over to Nix recently, and discovered that deploying builds over SSH is a first-class feature.

I wired up remote build pushes from my workstation to my underpowered VPS + antique thinkpad, and it’s been 100% painless. You can definitely make immutable work on <1 GB memory without much fuss if you’re not locked into a single-device model.