[zozbot234]

> It has a read-only root filesystem that gets updated over the air. ... you would have to root it. But then your changes would get wiped with the next update.

No, given root access you can simply overlay a separate read-write filesystem over the readonly system partition. It can be as "Linux" as any Live distribution with persistence.

[HugThem]

What are the "easy" steps to "overlay a separate read-write filesystem over the readonly system partition"? I would not even know where to start.

[lupyuen]

Just a simple line :-)

sudo mount -o remount,rw /

Then we can sudo apt install anything...

sudo apt install gcc gdb git make libgles2-mesa-dev

[panta]

This is re-mounting R/W the root, not mounting an overlay. What you install this way will be wiped out on next update.

[IronBacon]

I think something like "mount --bind olddir newdir"...

[panta]

This is a bind mount, not an overlay. For an actual overlay you need something like overlayfs or unionfs. See for example https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Overlay_filesystem

[lupyuen]

Thanks! Will try that out

[panta]

Yes, but if it wasn’t already done out of the box (no idea if it is or not!), you’d need to apply the changes to mount the overlay to the root on every update.