I am a container evangelist, I find excuses to convert my jobs into Kubernetes workloads, and I frequently use the likes of podman for one off apps/processes and development. I use Flatpak frequently to isolate dependencies for the likes of Steam and Heroic.
I really wanted to like Bazzite or Bluefin, but I can’t deal with the overhead from the rpm os-tree updates. I would frequently notice hitches for my use case (sunshine streaming), and the hoops I had to do to configure Nvidia drivers (for it to then not work as good as other distros) was tiresome.
I went back to Arch (EndeavourOS), and I improved sunshine performance and had a driver that worked with less fiddling.
I’m saying all this because, while I’m glad to see any Linux distro grow, I hope it starts delivering what it says on the tin eventually without compromises that I experienced. Markering on it being immutable and container focused is true, but I dont see the benefit (aside from more stability which as others pointed out, is already stable is most cases)?. Right now, its a simple to configure (assuming most defaults work for your setup) distro that is finding a growing niche amongst some users (obviously by the data shown). And thats good enough for now at least.
So, I bought a Pinetime with tariffs applied to go with GrapheneOS. It came to me about $50 USD shipped. For that price, I would do it again if it broke.
My needs are very basic, I can control music, see notifications, and get my heart rate on a graph when I work out. I only switched to this from Sensor Watch, simply because of the heart rate sensor.
Speaking of, you would be surprised what you could make a Sensor Watch do for you with no connectivity to your phone. I had totp for work, chess, and sunset/sunrise times as well as a onboard temp sensor.
Suffice to say, I think nowadays Ill readily pay more for FOSS with less features than something else just on principle. So I wouldn’t let what could be conceived as a “bad deal” stop you if your convictions are strong enough.