Recently in my little circle of friends the subject of immutable/Atomic desktops have popped again.
After not hearing very much talk bout it for a year or so I was wondering if there still is a goal of making the mainline Ubuntu desktop and flavors eventually be full on immutable/Atomic distros?
I can understand why it would and it does really make sense for several reasons. Support and security are a greatly enhanced and even the flavors could be made easier if they were just a snap package on top of a universal core. A user could install all the flavors if they wanted and then boot into any desktop without worrying about config files conflicts.
How hard would it be for the user to be able to still modify the âimmutableâ part of the core? Would the user not be root or sudo anymore? At that point is the user still âin controlâ of the distro they installed?
A third part of my thought is how would this effect the whole underlying ecosystem of other distros that are based on Ubuntu, ie Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, etc
Would those cease to exist or be forced to move to be based off of Debian proper?
Iâm asking because I am just an âend userâ that chose to use Ubuntu and Linux because of the freedom it offers and in some ways this whole immutable?Atomic desktop push from literally all directions feels like thats being taken away.
Someone please put my mind at ease.
A quick TL;DR:
Ubuntu Core Desktop (immutable) is in the works, but will not replace Ubuntu Desktop as we know it.
Iâm sure @local-optimum has more details.
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What Erich says is correct, please check out my blog post on the topic here: Ubuntu Core as an immutable Linux Desktop base | Ubuntu and the talk I gave with Ken on the topic at last yearâs Ubuntu Summit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahWrhnjjYDk
Youâre right that having a secure, immutable system has significant benefits but also restricts the freedom of users to truly customise or configure their distro. Our solution is designed to bridge that gap to some extent by offering a richer âcomposabilityâ story so users can replace subsets of the distro with their preferred alternatives, such as desktop sessions, or run them at different update cadences without breaking immutability.
That said there is no plan to replace the âclassicâ desktop experience, simply to offer this as an alternative in environments where it makes sense (eg for those who focus on cloud-native development, newer users who want that stability, or thin-client and single purpose devices that want a smaller footprint). Indeed the components that make up Ubuntu Core Desktop rely on the existence of a classic system to be built 
It will be a while before weâve fully refined the underlying architecture of Ubuntu Core Desktop to a point where a development preview image is made available but Iâm excited to hear from the community about how it might fulfill their use-cases when we get there!
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Thank you for the responses! Thats what I was guessing but I just hadnt seen it mentioned in anywhere that the âlinux mediaâ was reporting on it. Itâs always just the general rumor mill of people repeating assumptions as facts when they are not.
Checking out that blog post and talk right now. Thank you for the links as well as the assurances. I feel much more at ease now.
Closing to prevent future comments from re-introducing uncertainty.
This question has been clearly answered.