Abstract / topic summary
Laptops, workstations, and render farms used in media production and digital preservation are notoriously hard to keep in sync. Configurations drift over time as users adapt their systems, the "I update often/rarely" split can yield multiple versions of the same software leading to unpredictable behavior, until central management becomes effectively impossible.
Image-based, immutable operating systems built on Linux bootable containers offer a different model: the operating system itself becomes the deployable artifact. An image is built once, tested as a whole prior to rollout, delivered to the fleet as a background update and notifying user to reboot, and - if something breaks - to be rolled back to the previous known-good state. Layering lets a common base image be specialized into role-specific variants (laptop, workstation, grading, render) sharing the same underlying software version. Distributing further applications via Flatpak lets users install the ones they need into their home directories without compromising the system image. Combined with centralized identity, home directories on shared storage, and Remote Desktop access, the result is a true "workstation cluster": the same environment for any user, any machine, anywhere.
This talk presents the conceptual architecture, the trade-offs, and the operational realities of running such a stack in production.
Speaker summary
Jonáš Svatoš
Jonáš Svatoš serves as Section Manager for Audiovisual Collections at the Národní filmový archiv in Prague, where he heads departments responsible for safeguarding film and born-digital audiovisual collections. As a former head of the Digital Laboratory with more than two decades of experience in building large IT infrastructure projects, he leads initiatives such as the digital preservation of Czech digital games while ensuring technical and archival best practices. His expertise is designing digital preservation workflows on open-source infrastructure. He is a graduate of the Centre for Audiovisual Studies at FAMU in Prague.
