SYNOPSIS

- - - - - -

Project Shards [shards] MacOS inspired - Immutable Linux - Distribution

DESCRIPTION

Project Shards is an immutable linux - distribution using multiple Volumes to create one system

How - it works

Project Shards utilizes multiple Volumes - (called Shards) to create one root using bind and overlay mounts

The - different Shards

Project Shards Consists of 6 Shards:

- The Root shard acts like a preloader, it provides the special - root directories like /run or /dev and the initial tools for mounting the - other Shards and creating the proper root system

- The Boot shard contains files and packages requir to boot on - real hardware this is mainly the bootloader and kernel

- The System shard is the main root, it contains everything - required to boot into userspace and cannot be modified unless booted into - the recovery

- Data Contains everything the user installs themselves or changes - on the root filesystem, it is mounted read-write and contains /etc

- Users contains the home directories of all users, it is simply - bind mounted to /home on boot as read-write

- The Recovery shard is a seperate system from the other shards, - it can be booted by itself. It contains the Graphical and Terminal based - recovery for updating, troubleshooting or reinstalling Project Shards

Package - Management

Project Shards uses a pacman wrapper - called shardctl to install and remove packages, however users can also enter - a special mode to use pacman(1) directly.

shardctl also allows installing aur packages and wraps - around apx(1) to allow installing packages into containers.

Project Shards comes preinstalled with - flatpak and allows installing them by simply dragging the flatpakref files - into ~/Applications. This is achieved using appD.

appD also allows installing pacman packages by dragging the - .pkg.tar.xz files into ~/Applications.

Updating

Project Shards uses the Recovery to - perform updates. When a user decides to update their - Project Shards Installation, they get rebooted into - the Recovery which automatically starts the Update.

If the Update is succesfull the Recovery either turns the computer - off or reboots it, depending on what the user chose when starting the - update.

If the Update fails, then the recovery rolls back to a snapshot it - took before starting the update and warns the user next time it boots into - the main Project Shards installation.

Installing

Project Shards installs similiarly to - MacOS, the ISO offered for download is actually the recovery, when booting - into the iso the user is immediately presented with the Recovery screen and - can Install

The installation process only asks the user for the disk to - install onto, any postinstall configurations usually set in the Installer, - like user creation, setting the timezone or choosing locales are done post - install in a first-setup application.

Images

Project Shards like other immutable - distributions uses images to distribute updates unlike other immutable - distributions however, Project Shards does not - directly use OCI-Images, it uses flatpak packages as a type of ostree - frontend. This means that optimally the update process only consists of a - simple flatpak update to upgrade the system.

Realistically this is not the case, since extra things such as - managing /etc will have to be done after the update

See - Also

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-axtlos(7) -Specs(7) -Crystal Linux(1) -Linux Immutability Tools(1) -