Let’s not repeat the mistakes of (some!) old Unix-Heads and just welcome all newbies, please <3
the correct greeting is “I use Nix BTW”, Arch is so yesterday
I use ubuntu by the way 🤓
I use Debian BTW 👴
Oh, snap!
Nix just had internal politics. Reject Nix; embrace Guix!
“I use FOSS btw”
I recently tried switching from Arch to NixOS and the experience I had can best be described as apalling. I have not had a new user experience this bad since my first dip into Ubuntu dependency hell back in 2016. I’d like to preface this by saying I’ve been a Linux user in one form or another for almost half my life at this point, and in that time this may well be the most I’ve struggled to get things to work.
Apparently they have this thing called home-manager which looks pretty cool. I’d like to give that a shot. Apparently I have to enable a new Nix channel before I can install it. I’m guessing that’s the equivalent of a PPA? Well, alright.
nix-channel --add ...,nix-channel --update(oh, so it waits until now to tell me I typo’d the URL. Alright), and now to run the installation command and… couldn’t find home-manager? Huh?? I just installed it. I google the error message and apparently you have to reboot after adding a new nix-channel and doingnix-channel --updatebefore it will actually take effect, and the home-manager guide didn’t tell me that. Ah well, at least it works now.I didn’t want to wait for KDE and its 6 morbillion dependencies to download, so I opted for Weston. It wasn’t a thing in configuration.nix (
programs.weston.enable=true;threw an error and there was no page for it on the NixOS wiki), but it was available in nix-env (side note: why doesnix-env -itake upwards of 30 seconds just to locate a package?), so I installed it, tried to run it, and promptly got an inscrutable “Permission denied” error with one Google result that had gone unresolved. Oh well, that’s alright, I guess that’s not supported just yet – I’ll install Sway instead. Great, now I have a GUI and all I need is a browser.nix-env -i firefoxgave me thefirefox-betabinary which displayed the crash reporter before even opening a browser window. Okay, note to self: always use configuration.nix. Oneprograms.firefox.enable=true;and onenixos-rebuild switchlater, I’m off to the races. Browser is up and running. Success! Now I’d like to install a Rust development environment so I can get back to work. According to NixOS wiki, I can copy paste this incantation into a shell.nix file and have rustup in there. Cool. After resolving a few minor hangups regarding compiler version, manually telling rustc where the linker is, and telling nix-shell that I also need cmake (which was thankfully pretty easy), I’m met with a “missing pkg-config file for openssl” error that I have absolutely no idea how to begin to resolve.I’m trying to stick with it, I really am – I love the idea that I can just copy my entire configuration to a brand new install by copying one file and the contents of my home directory and have it be effectively the same machine – but I’m really struggling here. Surely people wouldn’t rave about NixOS as much as they do if it was really this bad? What am I doing wrong?
Also unrelated but am I correct in assuming that I cannot install KDE without also installing the X server?
I made a similar switch half a year ago and thankfully for me it was relatively painless. Some stuff got significantly harder to set up (e.g. getting a nice rust development environment, getting ROCm to work with some torch-based project), but once all that is done I have complete or near-complete setup instructions on how to do it again, so I am hoping the trade-off here will be worth it in the future (or I will drop nixos and move to something else if I get bored, time will tell).
For the beginners, I recommend to go with the flakes setup right from the start, here is a nice guide that you can use as a reference: https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world. I followed it through for the initial setup and I don’t remember having to think about channels, at least initially: I picked the most recent stable one right at the start and only updated it to another - the unstable one - later on when I wanted to get some fresh kernel version. The upgrade was pretty painless, as the channel is just the root input of the flake: change that one line,
nixos-rebuild switchand it’s done. With flakes I occasionally runnix flake update(+ rebuild) to get newer versions of packages (as the flake will be locked to the state of the channel at the time you install/update). If anything (well, most) of the things go wrong, just go back to the previous build while you figure out what’s causing issues (much better than the Arch experience of something going wrong after the update - better read Arch news regularly 🙃).Besides updating my configuration to add/remove packages and doing the same for development environments (btw, for getting compile time dependencies into nix-shell, you need to add them to buildInputs of the shell: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/FAQ/I_installed_a_library_but_my_compiler_is_not_finding_it._Why%3F ), I only ever use
nix profile install nixpkgs#<package>if I want to just run some app without adding it permanently. After these 6 months of use, I have found out I am getting much less software/package cruft building up in my system. If I stop using something (especially a big think like a DE), I can just remove it from the configuration, rebuild and that’s it. With Arch, I probably even forgot about half of the things I installed there over the years.
Also, Arch is sort of bullshit. For everyone that insists the Arch wiki is the pinnacle of truth, I followed it to the letter and couldn’t get some stuff working. To be fair this was maybe 8 or 9 years ago, but the wiki wasn’t as magical as people acted like. So like… Why bother? Oh boy, I’m gonna save a bit of space because I’m not installing a desktop environment? Who cares! It’s such over kill for the average user and you’re not really getting much in return. It’s sort of like buying a project car to work on. It should be viewed more as a hobby for folks super interested in creating the perfect setup for themselves.
The great thing about Linux is that there are options for everyone.
Want an OS with a full desktop installed? We got you.
Want an OS with almost nothing installed where you can make every single decision? We got you.
Want to build the OS entirely from scratch? We got you.
There’s an option for everyone and that’s cool. Don’t be mad about having a choice.
It’s not just the Arch wiki. It’s the overall DIY approach, the AUR and a lot of other factors. Some also just like the fact that it’s built by a community and not a company.
My one thing I feel like I can brag about in tech circles is that I switched to Linux in 1995 (Linux kernel version 1.2.1), and I haven’t looked back since. This was even before Windows 95 was released.
Yeah, but, like, I use Arch btw
ah, but did you use Stage 1 Gentoo? huh? huh?
Both? Both is good
Stop stealing my brainwaves!!!
But you are correct, nonetheless.
For me it is very weird, no one introduced me formally to Linux(no one I knew run or heard of it), it felt like it was a legend. I never really got to know how good it was and always felt MacOS and Windows were lacking, never really in control of your system, never happy with my system, always patching stuff. The years went by and my curiosity only became larger as Mac and Windows experience was getting worse and worse. I already had experience Jailbreaking iPhones and flashing custom ROMs on Android since my school days, so last year I bought a PC and installed Ubuntu. Next thing I know my computer is breathing again, the grass was definitely greener here. So I switched for both reasons.
Mmmmm fresh pasta.
For me it is very weird, no one introduced me formally to Lemmy(no one I knew run or heard of it), it felt like it was a legend. I never really got to know how good it was and always felt Reddit and Twitter were lacking, never really in control of your memes, never happy with my content, always downvoting stuff. The years went by and my curiosity only became larger as Reddit and Twitter experience was getting worse and worse. I already had experience shit posting and trolling on 4chan since my school days, so last year I signed up to Lemmy and posted my first meme. Next thing I know my feed is breathing again, the grass was definitely greener here. So I switched for both reasons.
While I did switch to Linux because Windows 3.11 (or more specifically MS Word) sucked, I never found the need to go back, even back then. So there’s that.
I only switched this week, and I kinda disagree with the meme.
It’s both.
I’m only dual booting because I’m a gamer and some games only run on Windows.
I had that attitude for a while too. Eventually you realise that having to reboot your system for a handful of games isn’t worth it. Nowadays I just don’t buy games that don’t run on Linux.
Eventually we will reach a critical mass where game developers will actively develop for Linux, rather than being reliant on compatibility layers.
Yeah, about half of my library already runs on Linux.
The problem I have now is that, soon, I’m gonna want to do a reinstall so Linux can have more disk space. :) My PC’s pretty fast, so the reboot doesn’t really bug me all that much.
some ~~games ~~only run on Windows.
some app only runs on wondows
Yep, I know. I have to log into Windows to manage the files on my Huawei tablet.
That’s okay. I can do 99% of what I want on Linux without Microsoft snooping on me.
I wonder if you could ssh into it. My charging port broke on my last phone and was able to pull all my files off of it via ssh
I use Linux because of the 3D desktop cube. Who doesn’t love the cube!
Beryl?
Wtf is her problem with the cube?
And wobbly windows
ahhh i remember being a bored teenager spending his life customizing his desktop too…
Nowadays I just want a working system where I can get things done, haven’t touched my desktop environment settings in a while and certainly don’t use things like cubes or wobbly windows anymore.
I switched in the late 90s to attract women. I still think it’s going to work someday.
That’s not a bad strategy. Just gotta add some leftist politics to the mix.
Any time now surely
If you’re also a woman, this may work!
Well, theres been a push to get more women into Tech so that works in your favour.
Your job is now to lure them away from the Microsoft bros
“Come back to my house! There’s no windows! No wait- not like that- don’t go!”
I liked that one band before they became popular. That’s what you sound like.
I listen to band’s music because I like their music.
You listen to band because you hate music.
We are not the same?
One of the biggest reasons I switched was of all the MS telemetry bullshit. That and I don’t know if I ever legally paid for a copy of Windows and I was tired of playing the key gen / cracked ISO game.
I’ve used Debian flavors of Linux for servers before so switching to it as my full time desktop OS was not hard. That, and, I don’t really use my desktop for stuff that uncommon. Most of the stuff I need I can get out of the box from the software center.
I use Linux cuz the IT & security folks at work gave us the OK for developers to dual boot.
Switching between the OSs makes windows feel so bad in comparison. Fortunately I basically only boot windows to make sure it stays in good standing with updates and network security. And this isn’t some hand crafted lightweight install. I threw Mint on there and it’s worked perfectly since day 1.
I use linux because it looks better
We are not the same
I use linux becuase slackware is pretty easy.
I’ve been using Slackware since 1994, saw redhat and Debian being born.
I use linux because I can make it look like Vegetable Valley from the Kirby games.
I use Linux cause I wanted to prove I can, I hate both Linux and windows for different reasons but I at least can use both!
