this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I've been using Linux as my main OS for about 15 years. I had my system break down in other occasions in the same way you describe. It is a nuisance, but luckily it never was a major problem. I believe once I had to reinstall the system, I was very happy to have a separate home partition.
I'm not sure what you mean by layering apps over the system, that could be interesting. Especially because I imagine something like a VPN needs root access. Is it possible to install a binary as a service with root access if that is not available in the repositories? I do for example have to use a quite obscure VPN protocol.
Yeah. You can layer it like a git repo fork layers it's changes. If something breaks you can just clear that forked branch and redo it. Takes like 2 minutes to fix.
So yeah you can alter system files in a very safe way and can easily revert changes if you don't like the result. rpm-ostree reset is the command that clears all changes and resets to master. I'd recommend looking at the rpm-ostree docs for a full explanation of functionality
Seems like a nice idea, I'll have a look.
It's nice to have an undo button on terminal shenanigans!