This is a byproduct of one of the largest and more ignored differences between windows and linux. The fact that Linux let’s you modify files while they are open whereas windows doesn’t.
This means that you can update a linux system by just replacing the files with the new ones while it runs. On the other side, Windows can’t modify its own files while it runs, so instead it has a second entire OS to update itself, and requires a reboot to unload all the files and boot from the updater without locking windows files.
No, silverblue does all the work before you restart the computer, and the actual work doesn’t involve replacing the OS itself but basically downloading some files and just checking a different git branch when booting.
I think files being locked is really intuitive, which greatly helps new users. Allowing files to be modified or deleted while they are open makes it really easy to shoot yourself in the foot. For example in the video of Linus switching to Linux he was uncompressing a file and tried to open it while it was still uncompressing, which failed since the file wasn’t complete. He didn’t understand why the file wasnt uncompressing correctly. That can’t happen on Windows, since the file being uncompressed would be locked.
I think there should be a ‘lockable mode’, and for distributions oriented to new users the home directory should be mounted like that.
Funtastic 😅 (endlesstalk.org)