It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.
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nix being 20 years old and still lacking decent documentation on the language it’s what hurts me the most, because the people who do know it works so some amazing things with it
Imagine if NixOS had as good a wiki as Arch. Personally, I wouldn’t bother with another distribution again.
Nixos has made me a better software engineer, I hope it takes off
How?
Software engineering is usually distinct from programming in that it isn’t about the logic behind programming, but about the project management that all software projects typically have in common.
Besides agile methodology, a lot of software engineering involves creating reproducible environments. While NixOS doesn’t provide anything that much different from tools like Ansible,
NixOS follows a functional/declarative design paradigm, functional/declarative design paradigms communicate similar logic for solving the same problem. It’s a restrictive paradigm. Consider how javascript is not restrictive, as in, you can code with any design paradigm in javascript, and how it’s ugly for that.
I also think functional paradigms mirror the natural language closer than imperative paradigms. That’s subjective, but I would still argue Math is a logical language that is a subset of the natural language, and since functions in programming represent a process of doing something, functions make for natural verbs. Meaning, understanding the naming convention for the functions, is a natural naming convention for when I communicate with other software engineers, even when I’m not asking about making configurable/reproducible systems in NixOS
Or when I look at how to config things like firewall, ssh, vpn servers, user group permissions… it’s a minimalist description that I could communicate to other people configuring even on a debian server
So, it’s hard because it’s restrictive, but if you’re willing to put up with a learning curve, you get a language agnostic framework for describing computing environments, more or less. Then there’s more advanced stuff with nix flakes, which still doesn’t make sense to me functionally/linguistically, but I’m starting to see the value in parallel package management and the precision in reproducibility they provide by requiring sha256 git commits
…to get a working config, you need to learn a whole new programming language and figure out the tweaks for each package you want to install, so I’d argue the journey is just as long
NixOS sounds like a way to avoid learning Linux by learning an abstraction.
that’s why I only use my computer with raw system calls, shell is bloat
You guys use an OS? I just push the electrons around my motherboard manually with a little magnet on a toothpick.
Systemd sounds like a way to avoid learning Linux by learning an abstraction.
You keep my init system (and resolver, and timekeeper, and task scheduler, and container manager, and …) out your f**king mouth!
it’s an abstraction yeah but understanding what exactly it is abstracting and how is where you’ll get snags, it’s definitely not a newbie distro.
Nix is to Linux what Tailwind is to CSS
I had no experience in nixOS, just went to the package website, it tells you exactly what to add to each section of the config.
Well not everything is packaged and when they aren’t it Can get more complicated to install since nixos doesn’t use the default file system layout. Another thing is that certain programs have assumptions about being able to do certain things like changing their own config files that don’t work well with the nixos way of doing things. (Looking at you fish(it works but you can’t manage your configuration for it(pretty sure?)with nix))
I might just be basic but the only annoying part of reinstalling for me is setting up my browser again.
All hail Firefox Sync!🙌
I’ve used Firefox for over a decade but still wouldn’t trust them to keep all my account info on their servers, Especially not nowadays.
I already started using KeypassXC to locally store my passwords, just importing bookmarks and add-ons I’ve left to do.
I think you can selfhost the sync server.
I use file syncing (Syncthing) and symlinks to keep configs for some apps synced between devices. I don’t for Firefox, but it might work.
I’m still a newbie Linux user so haven’t fully delved into Symlinks…besides bricking a VM trying it once when following a guide.
Can I for instance link a folder where emulators or offline games store save data on my main SSD and have it automatically copied to a folder on my large HDD?
It doesn’t copy data, no. Symlink is short for symbolic link. So it’s a pointer to another location. But it might be useful for you. Taking a guess at your goal, here’s a relevant example.
Say you moved all of your emulation stuff stored under /media/largehdd/retroarch. You could then symlink that directory to ~/.config/retroarch like so:
ln -s /media/largehdd/retroarch ~/.config/retroarchThat data is still stored on the large drive but will now also show under that symlinked directory.
I am a Gentoo user and most of that is already a reality on Gentoo systems. Get the stage3 tarball set up, slap your
/etc/portage/make.confand/var/lib/portage/worldfiles in there and build.Obviously, depending on whether it should be a blank system with the same apps installed or a clone of a previous system, configuration in
/etcand one’s home directory may need to be copied, too.I think Endeavour OS is like that too. I have 2 “unfixable” bugs on my arch installation that can never be removed. I have to manually do 2 annoying workaround tasks every time I turn on my computer before I can use it and this will likely never go away. I’ve been told both these issues can’t be fixed without a complete os reinstall and even then it might not go away. I booted into an Endeavour OS live usb and what do you know, both those bugs were fixed out of the box. Endeavour is based on Arch. The kernel it was running was a kernel number release after my installation developed both of these “forever” bugs.
Arch is great and all but holy fuck I’m sick and tired of this fucking bullshit all the time. One of these times I’m going to type sudo pacman -Syu and it will develop yet a third unfixable forever bug. This is the same shit that drove me away from Windows: uncontrollable degradation over time that can’t be fixed without os reinstall. Even Gentoo isn’t this unforgiving.
If you have time for that, you aren’t making the most of yourself. Goes for any hobby
Depends, you can use Linux in a professional environment. I know people who do.
Edit: also arch installs are able to be semi-automated too. They don’t take that long to do manually either. The image is over exaggerating.
Full time Linux engineer here!
hi
No, I enjoyed more when my Ubuntu didn’t update in place and I wiped the drive because nothing worked
How often do you reinstall your OS? In practice never, I installed Arch around 8 years ago on one computer and that’s the install I have today still. I copied it twice to a bigger SSD but that’s kind of it.
There is a certain thrill when you nuke your disk to install a distro you never tried before. I actually just nuke one of my laptop last night to try void linux.
I was wondering if Void was still popular. It was kind of feeling like NixOS took all its hype
Yeah, I don’t think that’s the best selling point for desktop use. For me it’s having all my configs for all my devices in a single place, checked in git, with bits of config I can easily share between my different devices.
Or, they could learn Ansible and get 80% of the way, and be able to reproduce the result on more than one OS. 🥹
That is, until a new Ansible version breaks playbooks again, or an OS is updated in a way that messes with you playbooks, or a package is removed from the playbook but not the installed system…
Ansible is good for ephemeral containers or VMs, but any more permanent system will eventually deviate from the set configuration.
Nix is not something exclusive to NixOS, and people are already using it to make reproducible configs that work on more than one OS.
I’m even using Ansible in what I’m currently building with Nix, because it does one thing well that I need to do: distribute files and run commands on a lot of hosts at once.
In my head they’re different use cases. Nix is amazing for a living build. Ansible is more pigeon-holed to production systems where you don’t want (or need) that history baked into every system
