news
Review: Vanilla OS 3 "Reunion"
Quoting: DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. —
What I found intriguing, and sometimes frustrating, during my trial with Vanilla OS was that the distribution seems to be implementing some interesting concepts - even some complex and technically challenging concepts - and mostly doing it well, but none of it benefited me as a user. The distribution adds the complexity of immutability, but that's not helpful for me, that's something I need to work around. It's not as though the system being immutable is going to make the Debian base, of all things, more stable. Instead all it does is gum up the works when I try to run a terminal as the second user.
The website and documentation talk a bit about APX, but none of it is useful information or provides any hint as to how it will make my computing experience better. In a similar vein, I went through five welcome screens and first-run configuration guides which, I'm sure, could be helpful for beginners, but it just meant I spent an extra five or ten minutes setting up my system. Since Vanilla isn't targeting beginners (their focus is on developer tools and containers) gearing their welcoming processes toward newcomers feels off brand.
Ultimately, Vanilla OS experiments with some technologies well, it makes running Debian with a layer of containers work (mostly) smoothly. As a proof of concept, it's a solid demonstration. Vanilla does a good job of layering tools like Flatpak on top of a Debian base. The question I kept asking myself throughout my trial though was: how does this help me use my computer? For me, the complexities added by Vanilla just impeded what I was doing, in ways Debian would not. Vanilla is heavier, it is more complex, it layers tools like Btrfs, zRAM, and Flatpaks which use up more resources. Vanilla sets up more mount points, runs more wizards, includes more container technology. All of this is interesting, but it doesn't make my computing experience or development processes faster or smoother or better in any practical way that I can find. Mostly, it made me want to switch to running the distribution's parent, Debian, to get the same underlying benefits without the extra layers and resource consumption.