Top all-time · #5793
Colin Walters
Personal blog · blog.verbum.orgsystemsprogramming
Colin Walters's personal blog at blog.verbum.org covers systems and programming. Since 2011, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “"Immutable" → reprovisionable, anti-hysteresis”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Colin Walters' posts on Linux operating system design, including immutable OSes, dm-verity, filesystem layout and the Hotwire shell. They are cited as explanations of these topics.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I put my pants on just like the rest of you -- one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make Free Software.
Most-linked posts?
- "Immutable" → reprovisionable, anti-hysteresis5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-02-05
What Hacker News says?
Colin Walters tried with Hotwire Shell [1]. However, it has been abandoned for years. 1: http://blog.verbum.org/2008/03/23/hotwire-hypershell-0-721-r...
Comment linking /2008/03/23/hotwire-hypershell-0-721-released/
on “Xiki: An amazing shell”Submitted OSTree – Robust OS upgrades for Linux as a story · 72 points
HN discussionmacOS didn't merge /usr, but it did do something sorta related. One of the purposes of usrmerge is to cleanly separate the read-only and read-write parts of the system. This helps with image-based distros, where /usr can be on its own read-only filesystem, and related use cases such as [1]. Usrmerge is not required for image-based distros to work [2], but it makes things cleaner. macOS, starting in 2019, is also an…
Comment linking /2024/10/22/why-bootc-doesnt-require-usr-merge/
on “Debian Technical Committee overrides systemd change”Submitted Platforms as a side-effect as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBit more on dm-verity as it relates to appliance and non-appliance systems. https://blog.verbum.org/2017/06/12/on-dm-verity-and-operatin... Btrfs will support cryptographically secure hash algorithms (sha256 and blake2) starting with kernel 5.5. I wonder if this is a suitable compromise over dm-verity, which can't be updated, and more conventional file system options? When I consider various use cases, Btrfs always…
Comment linking /2017/06/12/on-dm-verity-and-operating-systems/
on “Fedora CoreOS Out of Preview”Submitted "Immutable" → reprovisionable, anti-hysteresis as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWith Linux, the word "immutable" (in the context of a file system) doesn't ever actually mean it can't be changed. Here's it explained better than I ever could: https://blog.verbum.org/2020/08/22/immutable-%E2%86%92-repro...
Comment linking /2020/08/22/immutable-%E2%86%92-reprovisionable-anti-hysteresis/
on “New Distro 'BlendOS' Combines Arch Linux, Fedora Linux and Ubuntu”Submitted Peer review, FOSS, and packaging/containers etc. as a story · 2 points
HN discussionImmutable OSs are not actually immutable, precisely. More "reprovisionable" https://blog.verbum.org/2020/08/22/immutable-%e2%86%92-repro...
Comment linking /2020/08/22/immutable-%e2%86%92-reprovisionable-anti-hysteresis/
on “Understanding Immutable OSes”Submitted OSTree in action: “rpm-ostree” and switching trees as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted "Immutable" –> reprovisionable, anti-hysteresis as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted “Immutable” → reprovisionable, anti-hysteresis as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted “Immutable” – reprovisionable, anti-hysteresis as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Immutable –> Reprovisionable as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted “Immutable” Operating Systems as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Committed to the integrity of your root filesystem as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Efficiency of git versus tarballs for code transmission and storage as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Tweaking the Linux scheduler for “background” jobs as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
