You’re right that “immutable” is a bit of a misnomer in that regard, and it’s been argued that “atomic” is a more fitting term.

And I agree that a lot of documentation and how-to-guides don’t account for immutable setups (yet?), which can get novice users especially in a lot of trouble.

Personally, I prefer a declarative system (NixOS) that solves this problem rather cleanly and gives me most benefits of so-called immutable distros as well.

I find it hard to imagine a system that is not borkable by a superuser. Maybe it’s helpful to think of immutable setups as harder to bork by accident during routine maintenance (e.g. through faulty updates) and more resilient to bad code (through containerization).

*laughs in khal*