Bedrock Linux 0.7 Poki Distro Compatibility

The "Community Usage" column is a subjective rating of how heavily the given distro is used in Bedrock Linux community intended to provide a level of confidence in the "Known Issues" column's accuracy and recency.

Linux Distro	Community Usage	Known Issues	Fetch Support	Maintainer
Alpine Linux	Medium	None	Yes	paradigm
Arch Linux	Very High	None	Yes	paradigm
Artix Linux	Medium	None	Yes	None
CentOS	Very Low	None	Yes	paradigm
Clear Linux	Very Low	Many issues †	Unmaintained	N/A
CRUX	None	BSD-style SysV init †	Unmaintained	N/A
Debian	Very High	None	Yes	paradigm
Devuan	Low	None	Yes	paradigm
Elementary OS	Very Low	None	No	None
EndeavorOS	Very Low	None	No	None
Exherbo	Medium	None	Yes	None
Fedora	Medium	None	Yes	paradigm
Fedora Silverblue	None	Read-only root †	No	None
Gentoo Linux	High	None	Yes	paradigm
GoboLinux	None	None	No	None
GuixSD	None	many †	No	None
KISS	Very Low	Escapes restriction †	Unmaintained	None
Linux Mint	Low	None	No	None
Manjaro	Very Low	pamac/octopi †	Unmaintained	None
MX Linux	None	systemd-shim †	No	None
NixOS	Very Low	many †	No	None
OpenSUSE	Very Low	defaults to grub+btrfs †	No	None
OpenWRT	Very Low	None	Unmaintained	None
Pop!_OS	High	None	No	None
QubesOS	None	None	No	None
Raspbian	Medium	None	Yes	paradigm
Slackware	Low	BSD-style SysV init †	Unmaintained	None
Solus	Very Low	stateless †	Unmaintained	None
Ubuntu	Very High	None	Yes	paradigm
Void Linux	Very High	None	Yes	paradigm

NixOS

One effort to add brl fetch support involved bootstrapping via the stand-alone Nix package manager, which itself was installed via https://nixos.org/nix/install. However, Nix apparently disliked running in the limited brl fetch environment. This might be related to Nix sandboxing efforts. More investigation is needed.

Nix requires a runtime daemon. Proper support for NixOS might require brl enable support for pre/post enable hooks to launch the daemon when the stratum is enabled.

It is unclear if NixOS design assumptions will result in it becoming upset at non-local components, such as /etc files, changing out from under it.

Solus

Solus's "stateless" concept means it does not create various files in /etc Bedrock expects. This might be done to avoid fighting with users over /etc file changes.

Solus does provide default versions of these files, but outside of /etc. The expectation might be that the user copies them over at his/her whim.

This is likely removable with adequate effort. Bedrock could be configured to understand this concept via bedrock.conf lists of stateless copy locations. If the required file is missing but another location has it, Bedrock would then copy it over when enabling the stratum.

Clear Linux also calls itself "stateless." Efforts here should be tested against Clear as well.

KISS

KISS Linux's package manager, kiss, detects available executables on-the-fly rather than via its own dependency and package availability management. Consequently, it must be restricted to avoid accidentally jumping across strata. As of 0.7.16, Bedrock's default/recommended configuration restricts kiss.

kiss may call sudo under-the-hood. At the time of writing, using sudo on Bedrock escapes restriction, as using sudo resets the $PATH without conditionally checking if the new $PATH should be restricted or not. This may result in Bedrock-specific error messages when using kiss.

To properly support KISS Linux, Bedrock's sudo restriction escape hole should be resolved.

Fedora Silverblue

Fedora Silverblue uses a read-only root by default, which keeps the hijack installer from being able to do things like extract /bedrock onto the root directory. Investigation needs to be done to understand the ramifications of simply remounting the root directory read-write for the duration of the install. Silverblue's non-traditional nature will likely raise other issues as well.

GuixSD

Guix is similar to NixOS, but the init in here is not systemd, but shepherd which gave hope about having NixOS-like configuration of systems on non-systemd distros. Sadly, hijack process is not working, because of design assumptions of Guix. Neither did an attempt to use Guix binaries to fetch what's needed. More investigation is needed.