Comment by throwaway894345

I think you’re conflating packaging and runtime. OCI images are a packaging format while systemd-nspawn is a runtime. Runtimes and package formats are orthogonal.

> systemd-nspawn is for running your own containers, with a VM-like usage pattern (ie not immutable)

Containers aren’t immutable (OCI or otherwise). Again, I think you’re conflating images (the package formats are orthogonal) with their runtime instantiation, the container. OCI images like VM images are immutable, but containers and VMs are mutable.

My main objection to systemd-nspawn (at least as described in the article) is that it lacks a complementary package manager (or rather, that there’s no remotely convenient way to run software packages with it) and so you have to create your containers with manual changes and dodgy bash scripts. Regardless of what runtime you use, that seems like a not-very-maintainable way to manage software.