[$] An alternate path for immutable distributions

LWN has had a number of articles on immutable distributions,such as Bluefin and Bazzite, in recent years. These distributions have taken a variety of approaches, includingusingrpm-ostree, filesystem snapshots, andbootable container (bootc) images. But thoseapproaches, especially the latter, lead to extra complexity for a userattempting to install new software, instead of justusing the existing package manager.AshOS (Any Snapshot Hierarchical OS) is an experimental AGPL-3-licensed"meta-distribution" that tried a different approach more in line withtraditional package management. Although the project is no longer updated,it remains usable, and can still shed some light on a potential alternate path for usersworried about adopting bootc-based approaches.