This web page doesn't do a good job of motivating the reader.
I understand what the Plasma Desktop Environment is. But what is "atomic and transactional Linux"? What are the advantages to the alternatives? What other projects are similar? What is the motivation for this project in particular? Most importantly, why should I want to use it?
Linux distros that are updated with full system snapshots instead of package by package, similar to Android. The key difference is most of / is mounted read-only[0] and is only changed by distribution provided updates so you and the distro team always know exactly what's running.
> What are the advantages to the alternatives?
Greater control and stability since its essentially always running in a supported configuration. Easy roll-backs to a previous update if something goes wrong. You always know exactly what your system is running if you want to keep it in sync across machines (more useful in a server setting).
> What other projects are similar
Kalpa is a "sibling" project to AeonOS, which is atomic OpenSUSE but with Gnome (and other changes, which I'll get to). There's also the Fedora Atomic line of Fedora Kinoite and Silverblue (KDE and Gnome respectively), U-Blue, Bazzite, SteamOS, and more. I think most major distro lines have an Atomic variant at this point.
> What is the motivation for this project in particular?
For Kalpa specifically, it's to offer a KDE alternative to AeonOS. Originally there was just AeonOS, which was OpenSUSE MicroOS (an atomic version of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) with GNOME installed. Aeon has diverged greatly from MicroOS though and I think it no longer uses it as an upstream. AeonOS also refused to support KDE[1], so Kalpa was created. Kalpa still uses MicroOS as its upstream and I'm not sure if there's any plans to change that.
> Most importantly, why should I want to use it?
I use it on my personal laptop because it lets me have all the benefits of a rolling distro (up to date packages) without the stability concerns. Updates apply automatically in the background and I know when I reboot I'll always have a working system available to me.
[0] /etc is mounted as an overlay FS so you can still make changes to it. /var, /usr/local, and /srv are also still user-writable. I think /mnt is too but I forget off hand.
[1] Aeon is generally anti-customization and does its best to only offer one way of doing things. This is to prevent configuration drift and reduce the maintenance burden per snapshot. GNOME also has a more regular release cadence, which makes it much easier to integrate than KDE (or so I've been told..)
Yes, all projects in this sphere should communicate better.
An atomic distro is one in which the updates are swapped atomically at reboots. They also go by the name of immutable distros. Only the "system" partition is immutable.
Most popular I would say is SteamOS followed by the Fedora variants (Silverblue, Kinoite) and derivatives (Bazzite).
They are still limiting in daily use, rough around some edges.
Yeah. I use bazzite, but had to overlay like 5 apps. Flatpaks are often disappointing or just do not exist. AppImage is awesome, too bad it is used rarely.
Kalpa is an immutable distro based on MicroOS with KDE as it's desktop environment.
MicroOS and its derivatives are all based on Tumbleweed. MicroOS was intended to be used for container workloads. Aeon grew out of that with a GNOME desktop, Kalpa a KDE desktop. Because they were focused in a way Tumbleweed is not, they are a more opinionated distro. On the other hand, Tumbleweed is a rolling distro that wants to be all things for everyone.
I was trying to figure out the change as well - I've only used Tumbleweed through WSL before. Does it provide a desktop environment preinstalled or is it a 'bring-your-own' deal? (if not, that seems to be the big thing that Kalpa brings to the table?)
Kalpa is great and hits way above its alpha status; I've been running it on my laptop for months now with zero issues. It's been really nice to not have to worry about updates, just gotta reboot it every now and then and most things just work.
I wanted to try an Atomic Linux, I think I tried the Fedora flavor, nothing really worked for me for some reason, I gave in to Arch and tried it a la EndeavourOS. Have not looked back since.
You might know this, but unfortunately, if you leave an Arch install unused for enough time, and then run an update, you might not be able to boot into a working desktop.
[EDIT]
Oh, and I had a lot of problems installing Kalpa (from the submission) - all which I got fixed by using ChatGPT.
I was going to guess that it may be easier to get new contributors on a general site like Codeberg, but it seems like they're just using Codeberg pages to host the actual website, not using it for the bug tracker or anything like that. Interesting choice indeed.
This web page doesn't do a good job of motivating the reader.
I understand what the Plasma Desktop Environment is. But what is "atomic and transactional Linux"? What are the advantages to the alternatives? What other projects are similar? What is the motivation for this project in particular? Most importantly, why should I want to use it?
> what is "atomic and transactional Linux"?
Linux distros that are updated with full system snapshots instead of package by package, similar to Android. The key difference is most of / is mounted read-only[0] and is only changed by distribution provided updates so you and the distro team always know exactly what's running.
> What are the advantages to the alternatives?
Greater control and stability since its essentially always running in a supported configuration. Easy roll-backs to a previous update if something goes wrong. You always know exactly what your system is running if you want to keep it in sync across machines (more useful in a server setting).
> What other projects are similar
Kalpa is a "sibling" project to AeonOS, which is atomic OpenSUSE but with Gnome (and other changes, which I'll get to). There's also the Fedora Atomic line of Fedora Kinoite and Silverblue (KDE and Gnome respectively), U-Blue, Bazzite, SteamOS, and more. I think most major distro lines have an Atomic variant at this point.
> What is the motivation for this project in particular?
For Kalpa specifically, it's to offer a KDE alternative to AeonOS. Originally there was just AeonOS, which was OpenSUSE MicroOS (an atomic version of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) with GNOME installed. Aeon has diverged greatly from MicroOS though and I think it no longer uses it as an upstream. AeonOS also refused to support KDE[1], so Kalpa was created. Kalpa still uses MicroOS as its upstream and I'm not sure if there's any plans to change that.
> Most importantly, why should I want to use it?
I use it on my personal laptop because it lets me have all the benefits of a rolling distro (up to date packages) without the stability concerns. Updates apply automatically in the background and I know when I reboot I'll always have a working system available to me.
[0] /etc is mounted as an overlay FS so you can still make changes to it. /var, /usr/local, and /srv are also still user-writable. I think /mnt is too but I forget off hand.
[1] Aeon is generally anti-customization and does its best to only offer one way of doing things. This is to prevent configuration drift and reduce the maintenance burden per snapshot. GNOME also has a more regular release cadence, which makes it much easier to integrate than KDE (or so I've been told..)
Is there a relationship with concepts such as NixOS?
Yes, all projects in this sphere should communicate better.
An atomic distro is one in which the updates are swapped atomically at reboots. They also go by the name of immutable distros. Only the "system" partition is immutable.
Most popular I would say is SteamOS followed by the Fedora variants (Silverblue, Kinoite) and derivatives (Bazzite).
They are still limiting in daily use, rough around some edges.
Yeah. I use bazzite, but had to overlay like 5 apps. Flatpaks are often disappointing or just do not exist. AppImage is awesome, too bad it is used rarely.
This is a cool idea, but it’s not clear what problem it’s solving. Tumbleweed is already great
Kalpa is an immutable distro based on MicroOS with KDE as it's desktop environment.
MicroOS and its derivatives are all based on Tumbleweed. MicroOS was intended to be used for container workloads. Aeon grew out of that with a GNOME desktop, Kalpa a KDE desktop. Because they were focused in a way Tumbleweed is not, they are a more opinionated distro. On the other hand, Tumbleweed is a rolling distro that wants to be all things for everyone.
I was trying to figure out the change as well - I've only used Tumbleweed through WSL before. Does it provide a desktop environment preinstalled or is it a 'bring-your-own' deal? (if not, that seems to be the big thing that Kalpa brings to the table?)
Tumbleweed comes with desktop environment options. You can select from a few.
I guess you get the atomic system, but with Tumbleweed you get snapshot backups anyway.
One of the main advantages of Tumbleweed is the extensive testing pipeline. I'm not sure how a derivative would be able to offer a similar experience
"I have a minor inconvenience -- I know, I'll create an entirely new distribution where 99.92% is identical to the base"
Kalpa is great and hits way above its alpha status; I've been running it on my laptop for months now with zero issues. It's been really nice to not have to worry about updates, just gotta reboot it every now and then and most things just work.
I wanted to try an Atomic Linux, I think I tried the Fedora flavor, nothing really worked for me for some reason, I gave in to Arch and tried it a la EndeavourOS. Have not looked back since.
You might know this, but unfortunately, if you leave an Arch install unused for enough time, and then run an update, you might not be able to boot into a working desktop.
[EDIT]
Oh, and I had a lot of problems installing Kalpa (from the submission) - all which I got fixed by using ChatGPT.
I've left it for a long time and also run it daily sometimes, still no issues. My understanding is brick level changes usually are fixed quickly.
This rules but the landing page could benefit from a Download Now type button for the iso page.
Interesting they are hosting on codeberg. Opensuse has a pretty established hosting/build architecture provided by Suse.
I was going to guess that it may be easier to get new contributors on a general site like Codeberg, but it seems like they're just using Codeberg pages to host the actual website, not using it for the bug tracker or anything like that. Interesting choice indeed.
Codeberg is AMAZING. fast and super simpler. KISS
Just works