NixOS - Sometimes Different is Brilliant

[@JamieAlban]

First video of yours I've watched, you've got a great speed and style of presenting (:

[@OldTechBloke]

Cheers Jamie

[@stevantunic511]

Once you've gone through the pain of setting up the config file it's the best system out there, Its virtually indestructible.

[@kornerkorner1601]

Gotta agree, i havent broke it normally, only way i managed to break it is by switching up bootloader but i think that might have been fixed and it was really peculiar specific bug to make.

[@josemaria_landa]

I agree. For some reason, distros like Ubuntu, arch, etc. Feel dirty... after some time but nix OS always feels like a fresh install. Clean, snappy and fresh. After trying out nix OS honestly i couldn't go back to any other OS

[@-..-_-..-]

@@josemaria_landa ive been really leaning toward nixos and this is exactly what appeals to me. i get to a certain point where im tempted to reinstall to try to just get back to something clean, but with nixos your config file *is* your system and if you reinstall it configured the same way you're going to get the same exact system so there's no point. I'm really leaning toward installing on metal, but i want to fiddle around in a vm for a while first so i can see whether im able to get used to the like "x dot file option for this or that program translates to y configuration.nix option" sorta stuff, and whether or not nixpkgs has everything i want/need, and if not whether im smart enough to package that stuff myself

[@mlong5666]

Thanks OTB for the review of a unique Linux package. I've seen others present NixOS reviews but your charming presentation was more to my liking. I'm unlikely to install NixOS very soon as I need to improve my Linux skills before I venture into something as radical. That said, for those with better skills, NixOS may have more appeal. And thanks to those "boffins" that are smart enough to develop these alternative systems.

[@OldTechBloke]

Cheers Mike. You’re very kind, but actually this isn’t that hard to install

[@tonym480]

This looks really interesting. I think I'm going to have a play with it on a spare laptop. Thanks for the review, I had never heard of it before this.

[@jakubsokoowski5603]

The great thing about NixOS os how you can split a host configuration into roles that you import depending on which host it's on or whatever other conditionals you might want. You can have a Git repo that defines pretty much everything about your setup and easily reproduce it on a different machine, or a hundred of them.

[@kozas0]

Sounds like Ansible done right.

[@trueriver1950]

12:30. The use of a partition label (GPT) or if not available a filesystem label (eg on legacy partition systems): One reason this can be preferable to /dev/sdX so that you can set the same build up with different hardware partitions later, because having created the partition (or used mkfs -L) everything following uses the name you choose not the hardware-specific name. I already try to do those on most of my installs. However it's only a guess that this is the reason the Nix manual recommends it -- there may be another reason too

[@cpakkala]

If you'll notice on the download page for NixOS there was a virtualbox link you could have clicked to get the virtual Appliance with guest additions installed already.

[@OldTechBloke]

I mentioned that in the vid but I didn't want a pre-installed system

[@DannyMexen9]

Oh very nice, the type of stuff I enjoy about Linux. Something to try out this weekend! Cheers!

[@johnstath9666]

Don’t know why you were complaining about resolution. First time I could read the screen without me glasses on!! Great video!! Useful.

[@night_h4nter]

It's definitely an interesting distro. Hopefully you'll come back to it later. You may also want check Bedrock Linux out.

[@grenvillephillips6998]

That is the most exciting distro I've seen in a very long time; thanks!

[@black-forest-code]

I've read some other sources about Nixos the last days. But your instruction made it most clear to me. Thanks!

[@davidak_de]

Thanks for this great video! There are a lot of NixOS videos out there that don't get the point of it. I use it since 2015, now on all my machines and wouldn't use anything else. I also contribute to it and maintain 22 packages, which i consider simpler than on Ubuntu. But you need some time to learn.

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks for the comments, IO thought it was a unique distro and I'm sure it will go from strength to strength

[@laughingvampire7555]

using the distro NixOS is so much better than just using the package manager with other distros. Because allows for reproducibility of the building process of the whole system if you work with microservices (kubernetes, etc) this makes it amazingly superior option than the standard container creation scripts.

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

so you describe your entire system in a single file? I have ~600 lines for emacs alone, does it mean my entire system config should be many thousand lines long? how do you manage that? we split source files for a reason.

[@just__khang]

My base config for my desktop, laptop, and rpi is 400 sloc long. Changes betweeen systems are just removing lots of lines (because the base is made on my desktop where I have lots of things need running) and add one or two lines. It is not a lot.

[@jawuku3885]

Yes, you can split the config files, for example one for the system, and one for home-manager etc., and use the import statement in the main configuration.nix file.

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

@@jawuku3885 and you get almost the same mess as managing different rc files in classical scheme.

[@johnradley7176]

Thanks for video, and your time in creating it. I installed latest at time of writing, Racoon, 22.04, in virtualbox using Plasma and their new installer, but before I watched your video. Racoon is definitely better now, but both Firefox and Librewolf don't work for me and I had to install the unwrapped versions. And also I can't build/install a more recent kernel. But NixOS is definitely easier to use than Silverblue. I think I'll keep it on one of my PCs as a real install. Thanks, John (a very old tech bloke) also in UK

[@rickcontreras4943]

Thank you so much for your time. There must be a template so you don’t forget anything when you’re building a directory maybe

[@torsten.breswald]

i tried nix os years ago, i cannot remember that config file but i was some bloody linux noob, knowing nothing, but somehow managed to install it, if i remember right, even on harddisk, not in virtualbox. it was probably between some major upgrade of mint, before they managed not to have to install it fresh every main release, so i took the chance to try out this distro, i just stumbled accross somehow :) but i was so scared by the really weird folder structure with the cryptic paths of all the fallback-versions, and i had no idea what a hard link was that time, so the distro did last like half an hour on my laptop back then before i formated it to start of new, never looked back the forever backup system might really be helpful in some circumstances though

[@OldTechBloke]

It’s certainly interesting Torsten but there’s a lot about it I still need to figure out

[@madsnygaard6444]

You were ahead of the curve sir. It's is obviously all the rage these days and evidently for a good reason although jumping ship for new methodology is always somewhat daunting...

[@neotwenty-nineBzH]

Watched a similar video on distrotube Channel but yours is really great.... Clear explanations... Very interesting point of view Would be interested in having a return on full configuration on qtile for example.. With missing packages Tks again a lot for this video

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks a lot! Appreciate the comments

[@neotwenty-nineBzH]

@@OldTechBloke you're welcome. Great Channel. Excellent videos.

[@OpenSourceSlayer]

Love your stuff big inspiration to my channel

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks mate, just subscribed

[@atemoc]

11:00 If you want a custom resolution on X, just type these commands, for example, here is for 1920x1080 : $ xrandr (to know the name of your virtual display) $ cvt 1920 1080 The output should look something like *# 1920x1080 59.96 Hz (CVT 2.07M9) hsync: 67.16 kHz; pclk: 173.00 MHz Modeline "1920x1080_60.00" 173.00 1920 2048 2248 2576 1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync* Just take the part *"1920x1080_60.00" 173.00 1920 2048 2248 2576 1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync** or whatever it shows for you, copy it, and : $ xrandr --newmode *"1920x1080_60.00" 173.00 1920 2048 2248 2576 1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync** (or whatever it shows for you) and then : $ xrandr --addmode TheNameOfYourDisplay "1920x1080_60.00" Then, go to the settings, and choose that resolution (setting it directly via xrandr (like xrandr -s 1920x1080) can cause some issues sometimes), and everything *should* work, well, plasma on some vms have issues with screen resolution, but it works great on like any other DE

[@ribosomerocker]

In machines where your instructions fail, it is likely because the monitor can't have that resolution, or your xorg configurations were messed up. In both cases, running ``xrandr--output --scale-from 1920x1080`` just works, no weird problems that don't really have a solution anywhere.

[@atemoc]

@@ribosomerocker True, thanks for helping too :3

[@ribosomerocker]

@@atemoc No problem. I had this problem for a huge time and I discovered --scale-from in an obscure site and it helped me a lot, I wish easier solutions like these are more known/popular or more apparent on google.

[@atemoc]

@@ribosomerocker I actually use it since months on my main pc to have a screen resolution of 1920x1080 instead of the 1600x900 of my screen, quite useful to take screenshot/record videos that have a good quality for everyone to see :D

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

You know you have watched a creator to long when you almost know all the choices that are going to be made... :-) What Xfce? No Gnome... Lol Wow the fonts are weird in Qtile... :-) I thought it was my eyes at first... That is a interesting OS. I kinda like it. No I'm not going to do a install... It would be nice to see the update and tweaks you do in a follow up video... Congrats on the subs! Sorry I did not notice, I'm a bad Bruce... :-( LOL This was a very good video and well presented so don't apologize for you style... You know me I Love a Good Ramble... :-D Thanks for the video OTB! LLAP

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks mate

[@softsun2134]

beautiful video man!!

[@braaitongs]

I am new to linux and so far I think I might go straight to NixOs from Win11. Whats the difference between the home manager and using the configuration file in every day use?

[@rickcontreras4943]

This is a awesome lesson thank you

[@salparadise1220]

Have you thought about putting a link, in the description, to whichever distro is the subject of the video?

[@OldTechBloke]

Probably should

[@ABHISHEKSINGH-nv1se]

I think this screen resolution problem is with plasma itself. I had the same problem with manjaro plasma. So i installed manjaro xfce.

[@ablanchi]

After nixos, other distros feel so dirty. like, who knows what random files you've made to get everything working the way it is. Random xbacklight xorg file to get it working? have fun figuring that out every time you install.

[@itsgytis7833]

I agree. High-five bro! :D

[@davidak_de]

other computer users are like cavemen :D

[@itsgytis7833]

@@davidak_de Basically this, just quadruple it cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/619347358022369300/764206038701703188/unknown.png

[@zacharycarbon4312]

have you tried virt-manager? I know some vbox users have a bad first experience (with virt-manager) because they don't install things like qemu-kvm, qemu-user-static, qemu-utils, qemu-block-extra, etc...

[@OldTechBloke]

Yes I've tried it, I swap and change

[@keyboard_g]

Interesting. If I were to want this approach of a versioned OS as a daily driver I would go with Fedora Silverblue.

[@diegonayalazo]

Thanks

[@mbk0mbk]

It looks like hybrid of snap and btrfs snapshots concept, (except btrfs saves only changes not have clone copy like snaps ), I am interested in having few libs with different versions working in same system of nix os cuz that's what they(snap, flatpack,appImage) solve dependency issue.

[@sleepyoa4049]

this channel is amazing wtf

[@buteforce]

I had the same display issue with Kubuntu using qemu and virt manager. Changing the resolution would not take for more than a split second. I think it is a plasma issue.

[@pushqrdx]

the iterations are just symlinks, you don't save space by getting rid of them, you regain space by garbage collecting and optimizing the nix store though

[@drsmith3411]

Just Great!

[@iv6579]

So, basically, you make a kisckstart file and use it to install the OS? Is that it?

[@georgiosdoumas2446]

I also wonder what is the difference between the way things are done in this video, and the RedHat anackonda.cfg kickstart file

[@deechvogt1589]

I saw this one first. YAY!

[@OldTechBloke]

Hey Deech

[@deechvogt1589]

@@OldTechBloke I'd have to agree, Nix OS does not fall into the category of "yet another forked distro" category. I'm am going to put this one to be explored list. Thanks for another interesting disto review video. It looks like you had a good play making this one. I don't expect we seen the last from you on Nix OS. Stay well and I'll catch your next video.

[@LDWilliams]

build your own configuration file? Reminds me of define the environment in Cobol

[@OldTechBloke]

Before my time LD 😁

[@LDWilliams]

@@OldTechBloke gasp! learnt that 45 years ago

[@mlong5666]

Same here gents. Two semesters of COmmon Business Oriented Language in late 70's and 8+ years professionally thru the 80's. At least this one did not use punch cards made on an IBM 029 machine as my FORmula TRANslation class required in 1974.

[@trueriver1950]

Hi there! Why the more informal studio environment?

[@OldTechBloke]

I need to move into the cabin so still setting it all up. My wife needs the other room :-)

[@patricks6751]

@OldTechBloke Try setting VirtualBox to "VBoxSVGA" regardless of the error "Invalid settings detected". Then start Linux and you should be able to resize and adjust resolution without Guest Additions installed.

[@OldTechBloke]

Tried and failed I'm afraid

[@CristianMolina]

Now you should compare it with GNU Guix!

[@OldTechBloke]

I probably should

[@bils66tv32]

Nice to meet you otb. Can you teach us some really good hacking techniques. I am looking forward to learning amazing knowledge from you. Best regards 😇🙂😁

[@OldTechBloke]

Sure thing!

[@rickcontreras4943]

Your video was very educated

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

Yay a OTB video! 2nd comment on with the video! LLAP

[@OldTechBloke]

Hi Bruce

[@unclefester9113]

No matter how good - I go to my dentist if I am wanting pain and a root canal.

[@Evan490BC]

Absolutely! Don't use it. This system is not for you.

[@juanma9511]

NixOS runs on SystemD ?

[@OldTechBloke]

Looks like it as systemctl commands are used

[@favor94]

i heard some of nix user who against systemd will make nix project without systemd

[@itsgytis7833]

@@favor94 there already is this Nix project where people are trying to implement other init environments, but all in all - systemd gets the job done and does it well.

[@itsgytis7833]

Yes, it is strongly coupled with systemd.

[@FeelingShred]

20:40 uuuh, touchpad, that's a tough one... maybe this can be useful for the distro maintainers, if they will come here looking for opinions and feedback... what I have noticed from using Manjaro (libinput) and MX Linux (xinput) these past 3 weeks is that xinput on MX Linux (using the old Synaptics driver, last updated 2018 if I'm not mistaken) has better touchpad movement, more smooth and much more advanced options to configure from terminal, opposed to libinput which offers none. Another example where the "latest and greatest" is not delivering like the older alternatives did. Avoid libinput if you can, or if you depend on laptop's touchpad. Most people will say things like "just buy a mouse", I don't want to buy a mouse, I want the laptop that I've paid money for to simply WORK as intended. And xinput allows me that. Libinput does not.

[@StevesDIYProjects7]

peppermint is what i just installed on a older laptop and it flies works great and i think so far t he most user friendly. but i like ubuntu lts 20 the best. but thats from working on my servers. adding ubuntu desktop to your distro is best for windows users. it will install the bloatware you are use to. BUT it wont run in background when not using it like windows. always go with the distros who have the biggest community and is on top of all security updates. mints-ubuntu are constantly updating blocks to adware and spyware. so get in good habit daily to do sudo apt update. always keep it up to date.

[@hoangbv]

I’m surprised that I couldn’t find any comment mentioning Fedora Silverblue. You should check that out. It’s got some concepts from NixOS with an immutable base that can rollback, and a much less steep learning curve. The only thing it doesn’t have is the declarative reproducible builds from configuration feature. Having said that I’ve been very intrigued by what you’ve accomplished in this video. I’ve been holding back from trying out NixOS due to the steep learning curve, but it looks a lot less intimidating after I watched your video!

[@Spongman]

lightdm configured to allow root login? that's a bug, surely.

[@OldTechBloke]

It’s one of the main reasons I preferred the minimal iso. I could just install a non graphical environment and configure my user fully before adding xorg

[@trueriver1950]

An unfortunate side effect of their decision not to create a normal user up front. There was a time when all unix-like OS installs went through this state :(

[@davidak_de]

@@trueriver1950 he did create the user but did not set a password. you can just login to a tty with strg + alt + F1 and set the password there, so you don't have to login to the desktop as root, which probably creates user config for the desktop in the root folder, which you might consider messy... go back to the desktop with strg + alt + F7 a graphical installer would still be easier and we know that. it's just not a high priority and no one has finished it...

[@MR-vj8dn]

This should be really interesting for all of those that have incredibly unstable systems. I have never encountered instability to an app or the operating system due to a newly installed package though. This is not for me I guess.

[@YannMetalhead]

Good video.

[@FeelingShred]

I have to say this: for the last 4 years, I have been shielded in my little bubble of comfort because I was using an older computer "frozen" into a custom ISO that I've built with chroot. Everytime my system would break up, a simple reboot would bring me back to ground zero. Such a liberating way to use a computer and to experiment without fear. That being said, I just bought a new machine, which forced me to upgrade distro because of hardware compatibility. Ryzen. Yep, the pain is real. But the gains are awesome too. Back to the story, I download latest and greatest distros in search for the one that I will choose as my main one to build another ISO that I will use in the same manner as in the past. And I've been finding - pretty sadly - that in the last 4 years Linux had a regression, at least for the major mainstream distros that is. Only now that I finally understand why people made so much noise about systemd all these years, I didn't really know what it was, I was unnafected by it most of the time. It's crazy to me that linux community accepted and pushed this forward. It reached a point where the Xfce desktop (currently version 4.14.2-2 as of December 2020) is being shipped BROKEN with any Xfce distro out there, because it will not save your system settings across reboots. The bug itself comes from Xfce, but it is related to changes that were implemented to circumvent systemd's invasiveness. An init system that has 1.3 million of lines of code, and growing. And every updated will break a new different thing. It's a scary outlook for the near future of linux. Being made the jump from Old to New in such a drastic manner, I can notice that it exists. We are in 2020, and most mainstream linux distros out there will not automatically rename your network adapters to eth0 and wlan0. Such a simple, easy to do, fix. Such a simple and elegant solution. MX Linux does it, there was another one in the past that did it too but I don't remember which one.

[@FeelingShred]

In this recent upgrade, I also notice how my "outdated" version of Wine-staging 2.21 (that still did all the things that I needed it to do) had a prefix (~/.wine/) that only occupied 80 MB on disk, when created new, without nothing extra installed on it yet. I went on to install the "latest and greatest" most updated version of Wine and I notice that the prefix size jumped to 600+MB. After a few tests, I notice that it still has the same bugs and limitations from the older version, so I decide to go with an older version, that will at least occupy less space, can be compressed into smaller files, etc. Then, I stumble into the HELL that is when you want to purposely use an older version of an app on any distro that uses Apt-Get debian package system. On Manjaro, it's just a matter of downloading the package you want and running Sudo pacman -U /path/to/package If there are problems with dependencies, then press N to cancel install, and try running pacman -Sy instead of -U, that one will still avoid you from having to upgrade the entire system with it. So simple, so easy, stress-free. The big distros that were gold in less than 5 years ago have gone to shit now, mostly abandoned and obsolete. Complying with Poettering's systemd demands, rather than focusing on the user. It was hard enough to find talented people that would be willing to provide FREE voluntary labor to keep these distros in mint condition (pun intended) Nowadays, with all the bloat, even harder. All of this will push talented people away from potentially becoming contributors.

[@FeelingShred]

@@liquidjam7521 It had my personal Firefox profile in it, otherwise I would have uploaded it already.

[@FeelingShred]

@@liquidjam7521 But anyway, my brand new AMD Ryzen laptop lagged on Linux. I migrated back to Windows 10 and my problems stopped. Not only CPU problems, but essential things like Wifi CONSTANTLY disconnecting on Linux, bluetooth rarely working without issues, etc. Linux went downhill since 2016, and it's going to become worse. Such a shame, it was awesome when it worked. Nowadays, companies like Oracle are more interested in donating money to politicians' campaigns than helping the linux environment. Look it up, top 10 campaign donors even. And Oracle also provided servers for TikTok to use for free. "Open Source" is a lie.

[@FeelingShred]

@@liquidjam7521 1 year after daily usage of MX Linux, I also found out that the built-in package TLP (power saving tool for laptops) was causing my hard disk to have excessive unnecessary Disk Head Parking count. I removed and disabled TLP and the count stopped growing. It was around 10.000 after 1 year of usage (and I don't even shutdown, I reboot my laptop once each month on average) So yeah on top of all the issues Linux has, it was potentially causing damage to my hard disk for no reason. My cooling fan was making noise too. No laptop fan noise on Windows 10.

[@FeelingShred]

@@liquidjam7521 For Intel based laptops is a different story. I was able to find video footage of people showing how their Intel laptops (even new models) can reach 9 hours battery life on Linux (doing nothing, just sitting there unused) Meanwhile, my AMD laptop never lasts more than 3 hours, regardless of me using it or not. And this happens on Windows 10 too. And AMD people don't make footage videos about it because they are too embarassing to admit. It's more a problem with AMD I think.

hello im Milan, and i found some interesting distros for you to make more videos if you have a freetime. for example: GNU-GuixSD, haikuos, Venom Linux, Redox os, ToaruOS, KolibriOS, MenuetOS, dahliaOS, icaros-desktop, BlissOS, MocaccinoOS, Adélie Linux, Mazon OS, Avouch Linux, NuTyX Linux.Plop Linux, Clear Linux.

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks for the tips! I'll check them out

[@nathanruben3372]

Sucks for all software that depend on hierachical file system. Sucks for development too. Many languge package managers have problems with hixos environent.

[@trueriver1950]

Package isolation has a downside as well as the advantages. Shared libraries are no longer shared, so if two (or n) packages use the same code from the same library, that code is in memory twice (n times). In fact there is no longer any point having shared libs, you can save a few bytes by hard linking

[@itsgytis7833]

In 90% of the scenarios, you are wrong. In NixOS everything is based on channels (think of it as a stable release of a Linux Distro), as long as you are installing everything from the same channel - libraries and everything else is shared.

[@davidak_de]

That is a point against Flatpak, Snap, AppImage and Docker, but not against NixOS. Packages CAN have different versions of dependencies when it's needed, but it's of course easier to maintain when most use the same, most up to date version. And that's how it is done.

[@sreyanchakravarty7694]

Video does not render properly

[@FeelingShred]

7:05 It's so mind blowing to me that issues like that are still being part of our lives in 2020. Come on... this is outrageous... If one file is wrong inside of your /home/.../.config/ directory, X will cry like a baby and refuse to start. Or in the case of Xfce that I've been dealing with personally, it will not be able to initialize a session. What happened to programs being able to adapt to the situation at hand? At least Windows does that. The X server of the desktop manager are not able to re-create a working environment for themselves in the event of something breaking. Imagine if a tiny little file in your home directory becomes corrupt for whatever reason, you lose the ability of logging into your computer? That must be a better way to do things. But please, no Poetterings, no.

[@FeelingShred]

for proof of the Xfce stuff I've had problems with, I will post Imgur link below... if the link doesn't appear it got filtered but the video uploader can allow it to appear here, it's somewhere on youtube studio homepage....

[@FeelingShred]

imgur.com/a/CxFSrxb

[@FeelingShred]

It's sick how beautiful Xfce can become once you set it up with your settings... Unfortunately due to all the problems and excessive manual babysitting I will have to jump over to KDE or some other alternative that can provide what I need. It was fantastic while it lasted. Or maybe rolling back to 4.12 fixes the issues, I'm still making experiments.

[@barbarella7028]

Is it Nick's OS? I used to get down and dirty with Gentoo, but I'm now a Debian kind a gal.

[@FishCow]

Can you get Nob-free from the services.xserber? :) I'm glad you don't edit typos out as you go, makes the experience human. Thanks.

[@OldTechBloke]

You get what you get with me Brett, mistakes are part of it :-)

[@symbianflo]

Thumb up 4 the video, but for nixos ...not so much... stability by isolation QubesOS... system snapshoots btrfs on QubesOS, and it's a fedora core and you can install any type of package in xen , even exe.... so AFIC it's win-win situation... yes Nixos is a toy to play with, but I don't think it's suitable for a productivity machine.... For working any rock-solid distro ( debian, fedora, leap, any LTS wil do it), but in TTY, period,.... for fun...hmm that's another matter :D PS: Ya lost the hat... hahahahahahaha I thought you loved it....

[@itsgytis7833]

NixOS is very different from the distributions that you have mentioned. The reproducibility of your config has nothing to do with snapshots - the fact that it kinda acts like a snapshot(not really) is more of an accident :D The whole idea is that each build will produce a bit-per-bit identical result which is important in production environments

[@OldTechBloke]

:-) Love the hat but I swap and change. I have many hats

[@davidak_de]

i use it since 2015, now on all my machines (except smartphone, that's not ready yet) and wouldn't use anything else. it's way ahead of every thing else (except GNU GUIX, which is build on the same principle). you haven't got the point of it

[@itsgytis7833]

@@davidak_de You probably know about this project and it's not NixOS but here is an idea: github.com/danielfullmer/robotnix

[@davidak_de]

@@itsgytis7833 i know about it, but i'm more interested in mobile.nixos.org/

[@io-rf7ib]

i love nixos, just the fact it lacks mirrors near mewhich makes it reallllllllllllly slow, and that packaging electron apps is *non-existant* :kek:

[@jeanrodrigues6249]

sudo

[@headrushindi]

Wonderful plaything I suppose , but this seems that it would only be useful to a small niche of Linux lovers who have the time , and inclination to play for hours with a distro. To many this is fun , but to me I see it as a huge hindrance to making Linux accessible and useful on an everyday basis for those who are frustrated with Microsoft , and Mac's choke hold on the computing world. The average and everyday user who wants something easy to use and install would become frustrated very quickly with having to create it all from terminal commands . I do not see this as useful to the other 90 percent of the computing world looking to discover why Linux is superior and useful. I use Zorin and POP OS because of their simplicity of installation , easy maintenance , and dependability. And when they advance to the point of running a few of the Animation and editing suites I use .. I will discard ALL Microsoft , and Mac OS entirely.

[@davidak_de]

it's not very good at being accessible, but it has developed a rock solid foundation. it's definitely not for linux beginners, but advanced users probably value it's advantages. you need some time to learn how to use it, especially when you are used to edit config files by hand. that is not allowed. it is not possible to break the system (except when you delete the boot loader. just don't touch it!) i use it since 2015, now on all my machines and wouldn't use anything else.

[@AutumnWind92]

@@davidak_de it is good and fascinating but in my book an OS should just work. If I have to learn it and spend time with it, tinker it then it's not for me, I just dont have the time. NixOS looks amazing but you can't deny it's a niche and that's not a bad thing.

[@davidak_de]

@@AutumnWind92 then you might just get a mac :D

[@stefhannington2218]

This looks painful to install. I shall stick with something like Manjaro😳😳

[@sousuzumi]

It's actually surprisingly easy to install. You just have to edit the configuration file (which has some pretty sane defaults) and then the system builds everything for you with a command. All the more "arcane" terminal stuff like mounting the partitions can be literally copy/pasted from the manual.

[@sousuzumi]

I will follow you just because I share your hatred for GNOME. Or maybe I'm misreading you and you actually like GNOME, in which case I'll unfollow.

[@OldTechBloke]

Ha ha, no we share our feelings about gnome

[@sousuzumi]

@@OldTechBloke OK, then you're fine. I've been using NixOS for about a week now, and was looking for some videos on "howtos" for it, and stumbled upon yours. Sometimes it's nice to see a different opinion on the system's flaws and benefits. So far, so good. The idea of a declarative distro is pretty nice, and can work for eveyone. For server deployment, it's good to have the declaration file for easy deployments of the exact same environment, and for a regular desktop user it's good to be able to mess around and test new things and then be able to declare exactly what programs you want without needing to hunt down the stuff you don't want/don't need anymore. Also, having all the configurations in a file makes it simpler to manage, even if you need to learn the Nix language to do that effectively. Also, there's a tool called "home-manager" that can be used to use the same declarative form for the user's dotfiles, but I haven't dug into that yet. The repositories are pretty big, I managed to find even some weeb-ish programs I use within it. The only problem is that for the few software you don't find in the repo, it will be a chore to make them work. There's an electron app that is distributed as an appimage that's not in the repos and I'm battling the system since two days ago to make it work.

[@AutumnWind92]

@@sousuzumi Are there people who actually like gnome?

[@sousuzumi]

@@AutumnWind92 foot fetishists

[@_modiX]

Unfortunately, NixOS is bound to systemd.

[@jeanrodrigues6249]

sudo