Fedora is great, but it’s also the only distro I’ve had fail to boot after a fresh install and update.
Mint for sure. The slower release cycle is definitely better for nontechnical people, but show them how to install flatpaks from the app store.
Wait, so does the dotfile thing mean the out of the box experience will be degraded?
It seems they’re not changing the default configs, but instead adding an additional config that’s actually usable straight from the box. example video
/facepalm moment for not thinking of that at the time
But it’s lacking organisation and modularity. For example let’s say you need programming packages on one device, gaming ones on another, and general ones on both. It’s pretty easy to set it up with hm, and you can disable specific modules when you don’t need them (for example you rarely need to use a certain language and supporting packages).
It’s pretty fast, especially if you don’t get into flakes right away. You basically just install nix with a one liner -> install home-manager through nix -> start adding packages to list.
Here’s a comment I made when I was starting out with basic instructions. Do note I’m now using this command for updates instead (updates hm, package definitions, and the packages themselves)
cd ~/dotfiles/nix/ && nix flake update && nix-channel --update && home-manager switch --flake ~/dotfiles/nix/
For me the config management aspect of home-manager is mostly useless. It takes a lot more work to set it up, looks far uglier, and you need to maintain it because parameters change over time. Saving dotfiles in a repo, and symlinking them on install is simply easier.
The only two scenarios where it’s actually useful is when you have slightly different configs for different devices, and when the program doesn’t support dotfiles. A pretty cool example I’ve seen for the second one is managing Firefox customisations (settings, plugins, additional CSS), but I’m only disabling horizontal tabs so it’s not worth it for me.
And just update it with every package install and uninstall, on every device, forever.
Sure, but then you need to maintain it. I don’t know about you, but I never had the discipline to update it with every package install and uninstall. It’s especially annoying when you have multiple devices.
Declarative package management doesn’t have that issue since you’re managing the packages by editing the list.
Besides that, the home-manager approach works on any distro (and os?), you get bleeding edge packages, you get a built in rollback system, and you can handle configs as well (but I mainly just symlink them anyways).
For me that’s the main benefit of using home-manager on nixos and other distros. You basically just make a list of packages, and install/update them through home-manager.
You don’t see anything wrong with putting tools to make it more accessible for new users and nontechnical people behind a subscription?
And OP gets very mad when you call out this premium dotfile subscription bs, and proceeds to delete threads.
Xfce is nice, but it’s more windows xp than Mac
Address not found.
Also, it doesn’t change the fact you’re depending on some random person’s repo that is not moderated in any way.
I didn’t like using AUR when I ran arch, let alone some random repo with absolutely no oversight.
Also, I can unterstand if companies are hating it which just want to have a free ride and monetize efforts of other people. But for users, there are many many other options and distributions available. Why not chose one that matches your need better?
Why get mad about people comparing nix and guix, in a thread comparing nix and guix? Pointing out legitimate disadvantages is not hating. Maybe get off the internet for a bit and touch grass.
It has top-priority goals like reproducibility, capability to inspect and verify all source code, and providing a fully free system that is not compatible with providing nonfree binary blobs.
So does nix, nobody is forcing you to opt-in into non-free packages. And guix most certainly is compatible with non-free blobs, as that’s how most people are using it. The only difference is that nix is supporting non-free packages instead of banning even talking about them.
I honestly never tried them as they don’t fit my use case, so I can’t comment. The concept does sound good though.
The kernel is GPL, so it is hard to get support for hardware with drivers without GPL, it does not conform Linux’ license.
It’s a violation that’s not enforced, as almost all distros provide proprietary blobs. They balance ideology with usability, since they realised most people aren’t going to use a librebooted ThinkPad from the 90s. If everyone enforced libre purism like GNU, desktop Linux would’ve been completely dead long ago. If you need proof, check usage statistics for any of the free distros.
I, too, had also nothing but hassle with an NVidia graphics card in Debian.
And did you need to install a modified iso to have WiFi? Did maybe Debian provide those nvidia drivers?
The other thing… let’s turn the question around. Would you:
How is any of that relevant? This is not a question of additional software or services, but basic usability. Guixos as is, is for example essentially useless on a laptop unless you’re willing to carry an external WiFi card in your pocket.
If not - why do some people expect equivalent things from free software projects?
The only expectation I have for an OS is to work on my devices, guixos does not. And even when I jumped through all of the hoops to get it working, I still needed to use nix to install most packages I need to work. So why would I use guixos+nix+flatpak instead of just running nixos?
Why the hell would you use arch for browser centric use? Literally any stable distro would work perfectly fine, and doesn’t risk failing to boot because of an update…
The main disadvantages I’ve faced when trying it a few years ago:
At the time it was a great concept, but essentially useless for anything not Emacs/Haskell related.
Careful there. You are only a half dozen abstraction layers away from reinventing NixOS.
It was either failing before grub or wasn’t in the list, I can’t remember now but I know rollbacks were not a possibility. If I remember correctly I had to reboot once after the install, then update, and then reboot once again to have the updated system boot.
I’ve used Linux for about 15 years, and that was the only time a fresh install crapped out on me.