@pauldoo@mastodon.scot my personal take is that people on both sides of the argument are wrong here. Like, immutable systems have advantages but they aren't universally better. The power user's experience does matter and if mutating a live system reduces friction then that's a totally valid advantage that might make some people prefer mutable systems. Also I feel like there's something that isn't quite appreciated about mutable systems. The fact that Linux holds separate refcounts for hardlinks and FDs means that it is possible to replace files on the FS but the old version that was open remains open until a reboot. Effectively this makes mutable disgrros partially atomic, it breaks down when two programs talk to each other and only one gets restarted after the update.