Better security and application management, but compatibility can be an issue Tim Anderson Thu 18 Feb 2021 // 10:29 UTC Share Copy Red Hat's Fedora project is to add a new variant called Kinoite, an immutable desktop operating system alongside the existing Silverblue, which runs GNOME desktop. The idea behind an immutable operating system is that it is mounted read-only; also, conceptually, it is not patched but rather is replaced when it needs to be updated, in the same way as a container. This has obvious security advantages, as well as making features like rollback easier to implement. Silverblue was introduced in early 2018 based in part on an earlier project called Atomic Host. The first full release of Silverblue was as part of Fedora 29 in October 2018. Fedora CoreOS, designed for hosting containers, is also designed as an immutable operating system. Both CoreOS and Silverblue are presented as "emerging Fedora editions" rather than mainstream, and Fedora itself is the leading-edge Linux distribution from Red Hat, unlike Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which emphasises stability for production.