I am playing around with MicroOS, to try and figure out what it is about. That is, apart from the description/explanation, I am trying to understand how its “internal management” works and how/what that means in the long run.
Do I understand correctly, that “immutable” only refers to the “read-only property” of the root filesystem? I am comparing it to the rpm-ostree based file-system which is able to produce a hash checksum over all the image contents. Apart from the verifiability, I am also thinking about prolonged use:
- if underlying the immutability are simply the same package management commands, does that mean that root filesystem may contain changes that are unique for this installation?
- that is, calculating a checksum (authentication) would not make sense because it is unique for everyone given sufficient time and updates?
- So, the immutability removes the “human source of changes” and customizations mainly, but not the possibility that root fs contents may diverse given time, ordering/sets of updates applied.
- And transactional updates and distro upgrades (less relevant because Tumbleweed) are guaranteed transactional because the pointer to the current snapshot is updated only after successful execution? (As opposed to confirmed by comparing resulting hash checksum, or signature, or whatever)