An innovative, immutable filesystem
Totally Relaxed
© Photo by Christine Donaldson on Unsplash
With its immutable filesystem, rlxos prevents a broken system while simultaneously allowing changes via OverlayFS.
When it comes to the Linux distro scene, variety is unrivaled. Willing Linux users can choose from hundreds of distributions. Although this delights die-hard distro hoppers, others might find it too much to handle. While many distributions differ only in the minor details, the strategy behind rlxos [1], an immutable filesystem, is definitely not that of an off-the-shelf Linux distro.
Pronounced Relax OS, rlxos is one of the modern Linux derivatives with a progressive strategy (others include Fedora Silverblue, for example). The developers of Red Hat, Fedora, Endless OS, systemd, and the Gnome desktop see these strategies as the future of distributions, but this has not yet been universally accepted in the various communities.
Unbreakable System
In general, these strategies envisage immunizing the filesystem against vulnerability through updates by always replacing the complete image during updates. In tech speak, these systems are dubbed immutable (i.e., unchangeable). If something goes wrong during the update, the user can roll back to the previous image upon restarting GRUB. In addition, such distributions often prefer new package management systems, such as Flatpak or AppImage, over packages in the classic DEB and RPM formats or those maintained by the respective distributions.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.