ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Monatendiscuss

A Bedrock Linux 0.7.x point update released less than two months ago.

The slow of progress to 0.8.0 is in part because, after 0.7.0's release, the user support load has been very high, because the project community is quite active.

New-feature development is slow, but the project is very much not dead.

ParadigmComplex

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

To be clear, Bedrock Linux does not hang during sleep. Rather, it cannot enter sleep consistently; if it fails to, it simply continues on as it was operating before the request to suspend. The underlying issue is a long standing The Linux kernel bug [0] in which it cannot reliably suspend if FUSE is in use. When the kernel detects this scenario, it simply doesn't suspend, but rather logs its difficulty to dmesg. This is not specific to Bedrock, but hits all projects on Linux which leverage Linux's FUSE functionality [1]. It probably hits Netflix's ndrive as well.

In the few months since my comment you've linked, I've put some work into a possible FUSE-less Bedrock implementation. It will likely have some downsides compared to a FUSE-based solution, but the trade-off may be worthwhile for some users. While it's too early to commit to this, I'm hoping to eventually support switching between a FUSE-mode and a non-FUSE-mode with a reboot to allow users to pick the desired trade-off in the desired contexts.

[0] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34932 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=198879 https://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2011/10/msg00412.html

[1] https://github.com/keybase/client/issues/12458 https://github.com/libfuse/libfuse/issues/248 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sshfs-fuse/+bug/17...

ParadigmComplex

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

I've looked into this further since the link you've provided. I have medium/long term ideas to work around this, but nothing in the short term:

- Ultimately this seems to trace back to a bug in the Linux kernel. Sadly, I don't see any reason to believe it's going to be resolved in the kernel any time soon.

- A potential medium-term fix is for Bedrock to offer the corresponding functionality via a kernel module, and to fall back to a FUSE implementation if the module is unavailable (e.g. if you reboot into a kernel that breaks compatibility with the module). The proper way to do this would be via dkms, but is thus blocked on cross-distro dkms functionality. This is a realistic route, but given limited project resources it's likely quite a ways away.

- The long-term fix is to upstream Bedrock's required functionality into the Linux kernel directly. The main issue here is that we don't know exactly what functionality Bedrock actually needs here; it's often changed quite a bit from release to release. Keeping it out of the kernel tree - and using dkms/FUSE - offers needed flexibility in Bedrock Linux's pre-1.0 period.

ParadigmComplex

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

I can speak authoritatively for Bedrock Linux, although blendOS is new to me. From what I can tell reading about blendOS, key differences seem to be:

- blendOS appears to use a common host-container relationship, with automation to make things in containers transparently accessible in the host. Bedrock does not currently privilege a section of the system like this; everything is "equal." The Bedrock philosophy here is that privileging a section like this is limiting; it essentially defines a section of the system which must come from one distro rather than have the same flexibility as other sections of being able to come from any (supported) distro. The downside to Bedrock's flexibility is that has a higher ceiling on complexity.

- blendOS's documentation refers to getting "apps" from other distributions, where as Bedrock's aim is as much as it can do. My guess is Bedrock lets you integrate more types of things across distro boundaries. Bootloader, kernel, init, desktop environments, fonts, man pages, shell completion, etc. Like the previous bullet point, this can be a mixed bag and result in a higher ceiling on complexity.

- I do not see blendOS mentioning the ability to run systemd services from different distros. However, it seems to be built on distrobox, which does offer such a thing by leveraging systemd's ability to manage services in host-container relationships, and so my guess is blendOS can or easily could/will allow for such functionality. Bedrock does not currently offer this. Bedrock explicitly is not containers, and so it does not support multiple simultaneous init systems like this. Bedrock has an alternative on the roadmap, but it's a very long ways away.

I think a closer alternative to blendOS would be Vanilla OS [0]. Like blendOS, it has an immutable "base", although it is Ubuntu-based rather than Arch-based.

[0] https://vanillaos.org/

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

Ah, I now see what you mean. With the exceptions of /var/lib/dbus/machine-id and /var/run, which need to be shared for certain bits of software to communicate properly, /var is currently isolated by default. If a website is hosted at /var/www or e-mail contents stored at /var/spool/mail, a naive implementation of the rollback system swsieber described would roll back the website and e-mail as well. Bedrock can be easily configured to make such directories shared across the system and exempted from such a rollback system; hopefully any user who attempts such a workflow would catch this issue and change Bedrock configuration accordingly. I should probably investigate making such configuration default.

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

Without something to constrain where it is used, chroot can be theoretically abused as part of an attack. Thus, by default chroot requires root permissions. Part of what schroot does is indeed allow root to approve a list of known-safe locations for a unprivileged users to chroot to. It can do much more, including automate setting up the chroot environment prior to a given user's entry. A more minimal solution that just lets unprivileged users chroot to a given list of directories is capchroot, written by an Arch Linux developer. It used to be hosted here [0] but does not appear to be any longer.

[0] https://dev.archlinux.org/~thomas/capchroot/

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

I really do wish I could help, but I don't know how to reconcile what I'm reading as a mutually exclusive desire. If I'm interpreting you correctly, it sounds like you recognize what you're after requires complexity, and that Bedrock appears to be a potential solution because it offers the requisite level of complexity, but you don't want to use Bedrock because of its complexity. I don't think anything can be complex enough to meet your needs, while also not being complex enough to meet your needs.

> One thing is managing all the /bin links and taking care of all the directory mappings that are needed. Say env-A calls gcc which is installed in env-B: First, env-A needs a wrapper for all gcc packaged binaries - and those wrappers need to ensure the current directory stays the current directory, /bin and /lib become merges of env-A/env-B, etc. It gets hairy and I'm not sure what's even needed - I haven't done something this complex.

Early Bedrock releases, circa 0.1, had a utility that walked through the $PATH for binaries for each environment and generated wrapper scripts for binaries which cross the environment boundaries. It dumped these scripts in the $PATH after the environment's native binaries would be picked up, if they exist. While I don't remember if I ever did it, the re-running the utility could be automated with either package manager hooks or an inotify-based daemon. The main problem with this workflow was the time to wait for the utility to re-run whenever the collection of wrappers was problematically out of date. Things like having Arch's bash run `apt install htop && htop` wouldn't work due to the utility's runtime delay.

Code is generally easier to write than read. If your complexity concerns would be alleviated by having written something yourself - so that you know you understand it - you could try to mimic this approach.

> I think I read bedrock has fuse for managing links which seems like the level of complexity that's needed.

Yes, Bedrock has a FUSE filesystem which does the equivalent of generating the bash wrappers for binaries on-the-fly. It also handles translations needed for other resources; things like altering the `Exec=` lines in `.desktop` files for application menus. Other files it just forwards unchanged, like man pages. A long term goal is for it to support translating service manager configurations, so that one distro's init can run another's services without any manual intervention needed.

> My ideal setup is a base system which is fairly minimal, but handles boot, init and kernels for sure. And then isolated packages on top (docker, flatpak, nix, homebrew, distro-chroots) which do integrate with each other when needed.

While I don't intend to push you to Bedrock - I fully agree it's more complex than a traditional distro and at this point you've well established the fact you find that off-putting - this description does sound a lot like Bedrock to my ears. The only differences I see are (1) Bedrock's optional ability to let those "on top" "packages" provide the bootloader, init, and kernel and (2) the term "distro-chroots" instead of Bedrock's term "strata."

-----

When the next major release of Bedrock, 0.8, is released; you could certainly try out the official container-like solution for it and see if that meets your needs. This should be adequately segregated from the host environment while still internally integrated. Absent that, my suspicion is that you'd be happier having written your own solution here. This way you'd understand the capability-complexity trade offs and made exactly the balance you find best. You also wouldn't have to worry about the possibility there's some corner of the system you don't understand. It might not be as capable as Bedrock - I've got quite a head start on this - but it sounds like you don't need it to be.

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

Bedrock Linux is a system to integrate things from different distros. The desire to use it while avoiding integration with a "base system" seems mutually exclusive to me. I think one of us is failing to model the other properly.

Can you elaborate on:

- Why your existing bubblewrap/flatpak-spawn/bash-wrapper works only okay, and why Bedrock might be a possible improvement? From where I'm sitting the limitation with the system you've described is that it does not integrate well with the rest of the system; however, you explicitly don't want it to.

- Why you don't want to use Bedrock Linux as your distro? On the one hand, this might just be a matter of definition; if you define Bedrock as something other than a distro, would it then meet your needs? It certainly isn't a distro in the traditional sense; Bedrock's documentation refers to it as a "meta distribution" for this reason [0]. On the other hand, if it's due to some concrete failing on Bedrock's part - it certainly isn't perfect - it's not clear to me how using as an alternative packaging system independent of your distro would alleviate that failing.

[0] https://bedrocklinux.org/faq.html#what-is-meta

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

Apologies, I misinterpreted your concern to be a matter of losing the entirety of Nix's atomic features entirely rather than concern over even limited escapes from its Nix's scope. In this case it does sound like Bedrock's trade-offs won't be worthwhile for you even in the hypothetical future where it plays nicely with NixOS but retains the non-atomic nature of components from other distros.

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

I'm likely equipped to answer your question if you elaborate a bit on what you mean by runtime state. Could you provide concrete examples of things you are curious about?

The general pattern, in case it covers what you are looking for:

- By default, files/filepaths are isolated, similar to chroots/containers. Features the Bedrock Linux development team haven't taken time to work on yet usually work as they would in their native distro, but are not integrated with the rest of the system. This notably includes most things that package managers touch to keep them from fighting each other.

- Bedrock actively integrates a supported list of files/filepaths which are needed to ensure features from different distros interact transparently. The specifics here vary depending on the given feature. Over time, the Bedrock team expands the list of files/filepaths that do something to integrate across strata as solutions are found to do so without introducing conflicts.

- Bedrock purposefully eschews isolating things like processes and network namespaces. Running `htop` shows all processes from all distros. In the worst case scenario, the user can only get the given feature from one distro at a time. The most notable example here is systemd, which requires being run as PID 1; the lack of PID namespacing means a Bedrock system only has one PID 1 at a time. Switching between different distro inits usually requires a reboot.

- A stratum can be "disabled," which both kills all of the associated process and removes the runtime integration with other strata. Once this is done, it can be copied (backed up) or removed safely. The stratum providing PID 1 cannot be disabled, as Linux is not designed to run without a PID 1; to remove the PID 1-providing stratum, a user must first reboot and select another init. The `bedrock` stratum cannot be disabled, mostly because the Bedrock developers didn't put time and effort into supporting that workflow.

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

Bedrock does support exactly this workflow. I do something along these lines, with the nuanced difference that I have a period of overlap where I'm using both the old and new strata around at once.

When a new major release of a non-rolling distro (e.g. Debian) is out, I make a new stratum for the corresponding release. I slowly migrate things over, a few packages at a time. If anything doesn't just-work with the new release, I can easily revert to getting the given functionality from the old one until I've made the necessary adjustments. Once I have everything working confidently with the new release, I can remove the old one.

Bedrock offers a configuration file that declares which packages should come from which stratum [0]. A section of it might look something like this:

    # e-mail
    arch:pacman isync # mbsync
    buster:apt  msmtp
    buster:apt  mutt
    buster:apt  urlview

When Debian 11 Bullseye is released, I can `s/buster/bullseye/`:

    # e-mail
    arch:pacman isync # mbsync
    bullseye:apt  msmtp
    bullseye:apt  mutt
    bullseye:apt  urlview

then try out my e-mail setup. If it works, I'm good; if not, I can revert. Once I have it working, I can move on to the next stanza in the described configuration file.

That having been said, I don't think this compares favorably to NixOS's much stronger rollback system here. It's a nice bonus for people who otherwise are interested in Bedrock.

[0] https://bedrocklinux.org/0.7/commands.html#pmm-world-file

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

It depends on exactly what you mean. While you may not have intended it to be, this question is more philosophical than technical. Extended conversations I've had on this topic eventually drift toward subjects like the Ship of Theseus [0] and essential vs accidental properties [1]. For the sake of conversation, lets say your preferred distro is Fedora. If you replace Fedora's web browser with one from Arch, are you still running Fedora? What if you replace the kernel with one from another distro? And the init? Are you still running Fedora if you swap out every single file that is unique to Fedora?

Bedrock does not currently support being "uninstalled"; it has to be formatted over, like traditional distros. This is for two reasons: (1) I currently have no way of ensuring any one slice of the system is functionally complete such that removing the rest of the system would leave something bootable. (2) I don't want to advertise support for something active Bedrock users do not themselves regularly exercise, and by its very definition active Bedrock users won't uninstall Bedrock. In theory with enough effort Bedrock could be made uninstal-able, but I don't plan on investing effort there. If a user is interested in testing Bedrock out, I recommend using a VM or spare machine.

In every other workflow I can think of, Bedrock can functionally mimic being an alternative packaging system on top of whatever it supports. You can get most of your system - including the install process - from some distro, then use Bedrock to get features from other distros in a way that "feels" like it is "on top" of your original distro. Whether it is "on top" is a matter of semantics rather than practice.

With the next major release (0.8) I plan on supporting running Bedrock in something akin to a container. This would let users uninstall it and be less ambiguously "on top" of a traditional distro, but come at the expense of not integrating with the host environment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

> Thanks for coming on here.

You're welcome :)

> What do you think about Nix and Guix way of managing packages

I have not used either in adequate depth to make strong statements about them. That having been said, I find the idea so far as I understand it obviously desirable, and I would love to see more of the Linux ecosystem move in this direction. Where NixOS and GuixSD is the comparatively limited breadth and depth of packages. There was a point some years back where, upon recognizing the size and scope of Bedrock, I considered instead using the time to package what I find missing from NixOS. After serious investigation, I concluded both that this would be more work in total (Bedrock is, fundamentally, about leveraging work done by other distro maintainers so I don't have to do it [0]) and less interesting work (I find rote packaging tedious, but researching challenging problems enjoyable).

> is there a chance of incorporating similar features into Bedrock (like reproducible builds)

Given the fact a Bedrock system is mostly features from other distros, this would require making those other distros reproducible. Wrestling other distros into playing with each other is difficult enough; getting them to do that _and_ making other distros reproducible is beyond what is feasible with the resources I have at hand.

That having been said, I do take steps in that direction where feasible. Bedrock includes a Package Manager Manager utility, pmm, for cross-distro and multi-distro package management workflows. It supports interacting with a configuration file that lists which packages should be installed from which distros. Mine includes this representative but incomplete section:

    # desktop environment
    arch:pacman    gtk-engines # needed for gtk theme
    arch:pacman    terminus-font
    arch:yay       terminus-font-ttf # aur
    gentoo:portage x11-misc/dwmstatus
    gentoo:portage x11-misc/slock
    gentoo:portage x11-misc/dmenu
    gentoo:portage x11-wm/dwm
    debian:apt     dunst
    debian:apt     gcalcli

For a sense of why I get what from where:

- I prefer Debian and its lack of churn by default.

- Gentoo makes maintaining things I compile myself very easy. I have patches for the items I am getting from Gentoo, which Gentoo dutifully applies on updates.

- My preferred font is Terminus, which is normally a bitmap font and inaccessible to TTF-only programs. Arch's Arch User Repository provides a TTF version.

- Bedrock does not make gtk2 engines, which are *.so shared library files, work cross-distro; this needs to be redundantly installed for each distro that provides gtk2 programs.

pmm will add or remove packages from the available package managers as needed to match the configuration file. I track this file with git and use it both to reproduce my system upon new Bedrock installs and to synchronize setup across my fleet. However, this is very limited compared to Nix and Guix. It cannot express, for example, the need to lock a given Arch Linux package to a given version, or to setup a third party repository before attempting to install packages from that repository. I am slowly working towards making more and more things reproducible from simple text configuration, but I do not expect to ever get all of the features Bedrock supports from all of the distros Bedrock supports to be as reproducible as something like NixOS or GuixSD.

It should probably also be noted that:

- I would eventually like Bedrock to interact nicely with NixOS and GuixSD. Ideally, this would allow at least those slices of the system to be reproducible. Users who value reproducibility could then continue to benefit from them where the available, but still have the option to get bits from non-reproducible distros when the trade-off is worthwhile.

- As far as I know, Nix and Guix as stand-alone package managers do work on Bedrock just as they do on other distros. The limitation above is for NixOS and GuixSD only.

[0] https://bedrocklinux.org/introduction.html#purpose

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

You are very welcome

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

> What are the main downsides to using Bedrock?

I address them in this FAQ entry [0]. In my experience providing support for Bedrock Linux users for over a decade, the most notable downside is the resulting complexity. This is a fundamental result of what Bedrock is trying to do. There is more to learn, more that could go wrong, and more to wrestle with if something does go wrong. It's perfectly manageable for adequately experienced Linux users, but not necessarily for everyone.

> I'm an avid NixOS user, and tend to supply PRs every now and then if I run into problems. If I hit a problem in Bedrock, can I easily do the same?

I see two ways to interpret this question:

If you are asking whether Bedrock is open to PRs, it certainly is. Bedrock is a _lot_ of work, and I'm always grateful for assistance. Historically, the PRs I've shot down have primarily either been attempts to pull the project in another direction, or ones which break existing functionality. Those which broaden the list of features [1] or distros [2] Bedrock supports, if clean enough, are usually accepted.

If you are asking whether Bedrock plays nicely with NixOS, sadly it does not currently do so [2]. I know at least one blocker for Bedrock with NixOS that I plan to resolve in the next major Bedrock release (0.8.0). However, I expect there to be many more. Once I have completed more pressing tasks - sadly, likely years from now - I plan to deep dive into how NixOS works with the aim of getting Bedrock to play more nicely with it. If any of the many apparently large number of NixOS users here find this problem space interesting and would like to work on it before I get to it, I would be delighted.

[0] https://bedrocklinux.org/faq.html#why-not-use-bedrock [1] https://bedrocklinux.org/0.7/feature-compatibility.html [2] https://bedrocklinux.org/0.7/distro-compatibility.html

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

My understanding of Bedrock Linux's security concerns are addressed in this FAQ entry [0]. In the decade or so I've been working on Bedrock, I have yet to come across any situations where the differing assumptions between distros results in a security issue. Historically, every time assumptions differed in a way Bedrock did not handle, this resulted in things locking down rather than opening up. For a concrete recent example, Void Linux's build of OpenDoas updated recently [1], which resulted in removing Bedrock entries from the $PATH.

The primary concern I personally hold is in Bedrock's code to bootstrap parts of other distros, which does not currently verify the initial set of files used. I am hoping to address this with Bedrock's next major release (0.8.X) [2].

When Bedrock is far enough along that the architecture/code churn slows, I plan to seriously investigate the possibility of independent security reviews. For the time being, if someone claims heightened security needs, I usually redirect them to Qubes OS [3].

[0] https://bedrocklinux.org/faq.html#security. [1] https://github.com/Duncaen/OpenDoas/releases/tag/v6.8.1 [2] https://github.com/bedrocklinux/bedrocklinux-userland/issues... [3] https://www.qubes-os.org/

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

> You mentioned both Arch and AUR in the target user part, which makes me wonder if you were mainly a Arch user before,

Before Bedrock Linux I was mainly a Debian user.

I did briefly run Arch Linux before working on Bedrock, but I found the churn bothersome. While I was running Arch, it updated AwesomeWM from 2.X to 3.X, which changed AwesomeWM configuration formats and functionally broke on my system. Arguably, this wasn't a mistake on the part of Arch Linux developers; the expectation is that the user reads about updates before applying them. Had I done this diligence, I could have withheld the AwesomeWM update. However, I didn't feel like I was able to apply this diligence with the expected regularity.

Personally, I prefer Debian's pattern of only releasing security updates with any regularity, only making breaking changes every few years which can be applied when I have time to dedicate to understanding and handling them. Bedrock lets me get _most_ of my system from Debian, but still get newer packages from Arch or rare packages from the AUR when the trade-off of new-ness vs churn is worthwhile for me.

> and what triggers you do start this project.

I didn't actually set out with the goal to combine distros. Rather, initially (circa 2008) I worked on a sandbox technology. My aim was to fluidly transition resources between security contexts, minimizing user friction while maintaining permissions segregation. I realized only afterward that the technology I developed could be used to fluidly combine features from different distros. Once it occurred to me I could do this, I started seeing use cases everywhere, and pivoted direction to what became Bedrock.

> As an satisfied Arch user, I always find AUR has already included something I need. Better, sometimes I just found them already in community repo.

In that case, I fully encourage you to stick with Arch rather than switch to Bedrock.

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

> Hi and thanks for reaching out to the community here.

You're welcome :)

> As a poweruser. What are the benefits of this best of all worlds approach, and when might I need them?

If you run into a situation where:

- The distro that best fits your use case is lacking some functionality you desire

- Other distros provide that functionality

- The alternatives proposed in this HN thread (compiling from source, alien, chroots/containers/etc, third-party package managers) are insufficient. Compiling from source (`./configure && make && sudo make install`) also means manually maintaining the package for things like security updates, which can be tedious; chroots/containers/etc don't integrate with the rest of the system very cleanly; third-party package managers have limited package coverage (compared to the breadth of the repos of the many distros Bedrock supports); etc

Bedrock might be a worthwhile solution. Some concrete real-world examples I've personally run into:

- I generally prefer "stable" distros like Debian or CentOS, in contrast to the churn cutting-edge rolling-release distros like Arch and Void are built around. However, when I get new hardware, I usually need a newer component from another distro, which I usually get from Arch or Void. When I purchased a new printer, I need a new cupsd; when I purchased an AMD Zen 2 CPU and was interested in temperature data, I needed a new kernel; etc.

- Of the major init systems maintained by a notable distro, I prefer Void Linux's runit. However, as previously mentioned, I prefer non-rolling workflows, which limits my interest in Void. Bedrock lets me easily get init related things from Void and get other things from Debian et al.

- Some years back I attended a LUG meeting which had lightning talks on X11 window managers. Newly purchased laptop in hand, I volunteered to present compiz. I found - with only minutes until my time slot - that Debian's Xorg stack was too old to work on the new laptop, but Arch's compiz was apparently broken. Had I run either Debian or Arch, I wouldn't have been able to present compiz during my time slot. Since I ran Bedrock, I simply installed Arch's Xorg stack and Debian's compiz.

- While developing Bedrock's 0.7.0 release, I found libfuse 3.0 switched from a make-based build system to meson. Debian's meson was too old ("Meson version is 0.37.1 but project requires >= 0.38."), and Arch's meson 0.44 was too new and included a bug [0] that kept it from sufficing for libfuse. Since I was running Bedrock, it was easy for me to find a goldilocks (0.42.1) version from Debian Testing.

- For both school and work, I've been required to run software which assumes a RHEL-like environment. These had things like `#!/bin/sh` scripts that use bash-isms, which don't work on distros like Debian that do not symlink /bin/sh to bash. Bedrock easily lets me run this software against CentOS/RHEL while still letting me easily get the rest of the system from other distros.

- I have personal patches against some packages, such as mupdf. Gentoo makes maintaining these packages with my patches trivial, as portage dutifully applies them when updating packages. However, I don't have the patience for Gentoo to compile the bulk of my system.

[0] https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/issues/2761

> I genuinely am curious and considering trying Bedrock out. I just can't see what workloads I need it for.

My recommendation is to simply keep Bedrock in the back of your mind as a possible solution to issues you run into going forward. If you end up stumbling upon enough uses cases, consider it. If you don't, you might very well be better off with some other OS. Most distros exist as they do for good reason, and they suffice for most users. Bedrock targets a fairly niche audience.

If/when you do try it, I recommend trying it out in a VM or spare machine before using it in production, to make sure it does what you expect it to do.

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

It is not clear to me why you feel this way. Everyone I've spoken with who has put effort toward making Bedrock play nicely NixOS has done so with the aim of retaining that list of NixOS's strengths in the NixOS slice of the system. Let Bedrock proper fade to the background: for a user who is NixOS-oriented, such a system could be NixOS, with all of NixOS's strengths, with the ability to add or swap out (non-atomic upgrade/rollback) parts from other distros.

ParadigmComplex

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

> For a more extreme case, there is a schroot (or a docker container) with /home, audio and X mapped in. Works surprisingly well for desktop apps, like those embedded IDEs which require a specific Linux distribution you don’t want to run. You do have manage desktop integration (menu items, file associations) yourself though.

Very early Bedrock Linux prototypes were exactly this; including the choice of schroot. Bedrock could be correctly described as taking this idea and running with it, trying to stomp out as many of the "you do have to"'s and "except"'s as it can.

> Those solutions are hard to set up than bedrock, but they also do not have special filesystem magic,

I think a fair description of the trade-off between Bedrock and the two alternatives you've laid out should mention the breadth of functionality Bedrock offers they do not. This includes but is not limited to:

- Shell tab completion. For example, Debian's zsh can tab-complete Arch Linux's pacman

- Init systems. For example, one could run Void Linux's runit init, install Arch Linux's systemd, and reboot into systemd.

- Kernels. One could run Arch's kernel, install Debian's, update the bootloader configuration, reboot, and select Debian's kernel.

et al.

I expect, if you think about it long enough, you could see some ways schroot with things like /home mapped in could be extended to cover those use cases. If you pursue those, you'd end up recreating Bedrock.

> so I bet they are much easier to debug.

I am doubtful any user which understands setup schroot you described, who also takes the time to familiarize himself or herself with Bedrock, would have comparative difficult debugging a Bedrock system.

ParadigmComplex

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Bedrock Linux 1.0alpha3 "Bosco" released

Using multiple cursors simultaneously with Vim

First Release: Bedrock Linux 1.0alpha1 "Appa"

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