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Introduction

Immos is a Linux desktop whose operating system cannot be modified — not by you, not by an update, not by a stray script. Here is what that buys you.

What Immos is

Immos is a desktop Linux distribution built around one rule: the operating system is a read-only image. You never install packages into it, updates never patch it in place, and nothing on the running system can write to it. When a new version arrives, the whole image is replaced at once and the old one stays on disk in case you want it back.

Everything that makes the machine yours lives outside that image:

  • your home folder, documents and settings
  • the apps you install, as Flatpaks from Flathub
  • any local system configuration you change

None of that is touched by an update.

Why it works this way

A conventional Linux install drifts. Packages get half-upgraded, a config file from three years ago shadows a new default, an interrupted update leaves the machine in a state nobody designed. The usual answer is discipline. Immos’s answer is structure: there is no mechanism by which the system can end up in a state the developers did not build and test.

That produces a few properties you get for free:

  • Updates either apply completely or not at all. There is no partial state to be stuck in.
  • A bad update is one reboot away from being undone. The previous image is still there.
  • Every Immos machine on a given version is byte-for-byte the same. Bug reports mean something; “works on my machine” mostly stops happening.

What runs on it

The desktop is KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland — a full, familiar desktop, kept deliberately small. Applications come from Flathub as Flatpaks: sandboxed, independent of the system image, and updated on their own schedule. Firefox is preinstalled; everything else is a click away in Discover, the software centre.

Two native tools ship alongside the desktop because they need unrestricted access to the machine: Konsole (terminal) and Dolphin (files).

What it is not

Immos is not a distribution you extend by compiling things into it. There is no package manager, no compiler and no /usr/src in the running system — Gentoo builds the image, but the image cannot rebuild itself. If you need software, it comes as a Flatpak or it runs in a container.

That is a real constraint, stated up front. For a desktop that mostly runs applications, it costs very little and removes an entire category of breakage.

Where to go next