this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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I’m familiar enough with Linux but never used an immutable distro. I recognize the technical difference between what you describe and “go delete a specific file in safe mode”. But how about the more generic statement? Is this much different from “boot in a special way and go fix the problem”? Is any easier or more difficult than what people had to do on windows?
Primarily it's different because you would not have had to boot into any safe mode. You would have just booted from the last good image from like a day ago and deleted the current image and kept using the computer.
What’s the user experience like there? Are you prompted to do it if the system fails to boot “happily”?
Honestly, I'm actually not sure as I never had the system break that badly while I was using it.
lol thanks for the answer. This is the really relevant bit isn’t it? My Linux machines have also never died this badly before. But I’ve seen windows do it a number of times before this whole fiasco.
I don't think any of the major distros do it currently (some are working twards it tho), but there are ways (primarily/only one I know is with
systemd-boot). It invokes one of the boot binaries (usually "Unified Kernel Images") that are marked as "good" or one that still has "tries left" (whichever is newer). A binary that has "tries left" gets that count decremented when the boot is unsuccessful and when it reaches 0 it is marked as "bad" and if it boot successfully it gets marked as "good".So this system is basically just requires restarting the system on an unsuccessful boot if it isn't done already automatically.