It might appear that way to people that weren't involved in the history, but a lot of it was based on ideas learned from stateless linux, circa 2004. People in

It might appear that way to people that weren't involved in the history, but a lot of it was based on ideas learned from stateless linux, circa 2004. People in the desktop team had been working on read-only root OS's for a long time, and it was only at a certain point that RH management bought off on forming a product/spin. But to say that work only started once Atomic was a thing would be inaccurate. It's probably fair to say that ChromeOS/CoreOS lit a match under some upper management though.