"immutable"
Why? Note that these distros are not "immutable", but all of the below are used mostly by noobs and are all immutable
- android
- steamOS
- any mobile or console OS
- even Windows and MacOS in big parts
Image-based means that updates and upgrades are EXTREMELY stable. They basically never break, while package-based systems ALWAYS lead you into horrible situations, unbooting desktops, broken whatever, autoremoving GNOME for whatever reason etc.
Murphys law, if something bad can happen, it will happen. We cannot seriously use and promote systems where we expect upgrades to break them.
I nowadays administer systems a bit and have seen completely broken systems on
- Linux Mint
- Fedora regular
- Ubuntu
- Debian
Package-based distros are not beginner friendly. They give the user the complete ability to break their entire system, for what reason?
Not everyone needs to be a sysadmin. If we want to convince people to switch, Linux needs to be at least as stable as Windows or even MacOS.
declarative
Why not?? Have you ever thought about that statement more than a few seconds?
Why dont you see the whole picture? Declarative means you need to spend more time setting things up, having an experienced person help you will greatly improve this.
But from then on you have a rock stable and very transparent system that will not break over time, and making changes is pretty easy.
I made a repo on Codeberg for exactly that purpose, showing people how easy a simple NixOS setup can be.