@Natanox Seems like NixOS replaced Arch as both a local extremist cult and the most effective newbie repellent.
What’s funny to me here is that, as a long time Arch user, I have been considering switching to NixOS. One of the most terrifying thoughts to me is that after using the same Arch install for 2 years I will spend ages trying to recreate it if I ever have to. Oh, that and Nix letting you test packages seems like a cool feature.
I’ve been on arch around a year now and also considered the jump to NixOS. I was actually dual booting it with arch for awhile and I found pretty quickly that the shit documentation was a huge turn off for me. I ended up nuking the nix partition and reclaiming it for arch.
This is my biggest issue. I am utterly spoiled to the exquisiteness that is Arch’s Wiki…
I mean the Arch wiki mostly works on NixOS too. The problem with NixOS documentation is that there aren’t many examples for the Nix language itself.
What is the Nix language like?
If Haskell and json had a baby
Hmm, that sounds more like dhall
Terrible. Unless you like Haskell, DSLs, and the like.
I’ve found that the Arch wiki works for most distros if you know how to translate it. There have been multiple times I’ve searched how to do something or how to fix something in Linux and the only useful result is an arch forum or wiki. All I had to do is translate the steps for debian/ubuntu/opensuse/fedora/rpiOS, etc.
The process was usually “search this error” > “this part” isn’t working, search “this part error” > arch forum showing steps to fix. Search “where the fuck is this file in <distro>”. Get “it’s usually here, here, or over here”, then do arch steps.
Then there’s opensuse, and there’s fucking camelcase capitals in their packages (NetworkManager? Seriously?) so I have to Google “opensuse <command/application> package” like a fucking rube.
Yeah one nice thing about nixos is that their package search website is really good. You can also search for config options with examples.
Arch wiki is the documentation gold standard
That and the need to learn a bespoke, weird programming language that will only ever be useful for this one thing have really turned me off of that distro.
Definitely. Why not use something off the shelf! That by itself would make it much more approachable
The nice thing is that NixOS will keep your setup and all your tweaks if you ever need to reinstall. It’s designed to solve that exact problem.
One way of switching over would be to carry over your homedir and just starting with migrating packages and config as a first step.
I am about to switch away from arch that I installed 5 years ago. It’s a daunting thought isn’t it?
I was in the same boat two years ago.
What I did is that I’ve setup a VM with NixOS in it to play with, learn the language and tweak the configuration file.
The great thing about NixOS is that once I was feeling confident enough to switch I installed NixOS on bare metal, loaded the configuration file I prepared in the VM and I instantly had everything installed and running. (Except for the NVidia drivers, fuck nvidia)
Since then I’ve stayed in nixos and I’m not looking back.
This would likely be the plan. This is solid advice really for anyone swapping distros really.
If you have more time like me, you can just “fuck it we ball” and install NixOS and wipe your drive
Documentation? For Nix? Yeah right.
Did you know that the suffix for nix documentation files is, coincidentally, .nix?
The code of the packages is the documentation. So the newcomers better start learning Nix language and reading the paper about how Nix works under the hood before they get started! /s
But seriously, I used NixOs for about 2 years almost 10 years ago and while it was/is fascinating when you have everything setup, getting there and maintaining everything across so many packages that each have their own way of configuring them took hundreds of hours. I’m back on Arch using a custom tool I wrote to fully manage my configs, packages, dotfiles etc.
The way I remember it is that there is no consistency across Nix packages and it all feels like a giant puzzle for people who enjoy spending time configuring more than actually using the computer. And I say that as someone who actually enjoyed getting into that when I had unlimited time.
I dunno man. I spent way less time configuring my machines on NixOS because it just works. But in fairness, that is after I have spent a lot of time learning it (compared to classic systems that is, not a lot compared to NixOS maintainers who write way better module than I do). Now that there is a foundation, I just run the updates. It’s almost scarily stable. And the ability to group related settings together is such a bliss because you no longer wonder about “what did I do to enable X”, just open the file, it’s all in one place. Stuff that could be three completely different things (e.g. a service specific config file, a PAM entry and the service activation itself in effectively 5 lines. Want to do something for multiple services? Just map over their list. Etc
I happily used Arch for 15 years and after trying NixOS on a decommissioned machine for one day I switched over everything as fast as possible. And I did try out Ansible on Arch, so it’s not like I didn’t try management via a tool. But using a system like NixOS just solves sooo many potential issues.
It obviously comes with downsides, for example there is no quick configuration change. Changing something small requires another evaluation. Still worth it
Okay, but when I figure it out on my desktop I just copy paste the exact snippet to my laptop and it just works.
Do you think I can remember the steps I took to fix my issue with Ubuntu? I don’t remember what file I modified and where I put some config file.
But to be fair, Nix is not the only answer to that. There are lots of tools for just dotfiles but you can also build something using e.g. ansible to manage everything.
All my computers have their config in a git repo. That includes users, packages, services, dotfiles, /etc configs and so on. I used ansible before writing my own tool. I can install Arch from scratch and only need to partition, run one script and then apply my config on first boot using my tool to have my system restored. I know it’s not as declarative and absolute/reproducible as Nix, but it works and it’s way less painful than my last attempt at giving NixOS a go.
I’m about neck deep in ancible/salt/chef over the years at work.
They are great tools for simple configurations where multiple people are needed in the kitchen, but they require meticulous curation.
But I buy a new laptop, I slap in my USB vanilla Nix ISO, drop two config files in /etc/nixos call rebuild and I’m done.
Updating my packages to latest is a single command. Adding a package is a single line. And the most powerful thing, nix-shell -p whatever install whatever for that session. I don’t even bother putting most stuff into my declaritive configs, nix-shell -p ffmpeg, when I exit it’s no longer available.
And if I do something awful to my config and brick it, it’s just one grub menu to go back to the previous version.
Either my Ansible knowledge is too limited which is entirely possible, or you can’t do stuff there that’s possible with Nix. Let’s stay go with my example that you have something that requires changes in PAM. So you write an Ansible file installing the package (which is distribution-specific, so you’re losing one advantage you had over NixOS), enable the service and add your entries to the respective PAM file (e.g. login because you want to enable user authentication against kanidm on your machine). The ordering in these files matter. Sure you have
insertbeforeandinsertafterforlineinfileandblockinfile, but this basically requires you to know the rest of the file in advance… not a problem if your system is always the same, but you don’t have the flexibility and composability that Nix offers.I’d say, from my experience with Ansible, that it can absolutely do all of that. Might be able to use a single task for the package install, if the distro supports the generic
packagemodule. There’s also a pamd module that would likely cover your needs there. If not, it would still be possible with a custom module or some Xinfile fuckery (if it can be fine programmatically, it can be done in Ansible, more niche things may require writing code, however).It would not be as terse though. Really wish there was a good middle ground.
It can do that, but it gets more complicated because you are doing this is in an imperative way. For example, in Nix it’s trivial to change the config and remove something.
In ansible there’s no guarantee installing a package and removing it won’t have side effects. You could install a DE and decide to switch back, but it already changed some files on your system
This is true. It can be done but would require functionality not included in stock Ansible.
I really love this image for this, that expression combo is perfection.
definetly! do you know what anime that is?
Chatlotte (2015)
I mean isn’t it accepted that NixOS is a terrible pick for a beginner, especially a non-technical one? I feel like even the Nix community doesn’t recommend the distro to complete beginners.
I use Nixos BTW.
And I can’t recommend it to anyone. Not even veterans.
I can only say if you like souls like games nixos might be your thing…
Lol I’ve been considering trying it and that might push me per the edge. The self hate is strong xD
If you do, this website is very helpful: https://search.nixos.org/options
Doubt, highly doubt it.
I use nixos btw
Complete with home manager, flakes, build server and automated deployments, the whole lot on machines from compute stick, gaming rig, hell even a surface. I have never had more free time than compared to arch. updates & config drift are no longer anything I worry about. Save so much time on rebuilds & customisations.
Nixos users never recommend it for new users. I always recommend mint or Ubuntu depending on the person and what they are used to. Seasoned Linux users i don’t even recommend it unless they have basic programming skills.
After that, bring it on, stick through the learning curve, you dont need the documentation. I only needed it at the start for a short period until it clicked and I figured it out. the repo and search has more than enough. In the repo you will find community builds and configs for a wide variety of hardware.
I’m not advanced, just a distrohopper for fun :-) but NixOs seemed excellent, you install like an other os, open the config file and write a list of what you want installed, rebuild and it’s all there. Then use it just like any other distro. That seems a good experience to me and if you are just a simple desktop user like me what else would you ever need to do? Am I right that all the homemanager and flakes business is optional and for people with more complicated requirements?
Seasoned Linux users i don’t even recommend it unless they have basic programming skills.
I’ve been using Linux about a decade and a half, and programming for almost twice that. I really just don’t like the Nix language (or DSLs altogether). I also had a poor experience with my first test of NixOS, by the docs, having not configured my networking stack, in making it impossible to fix without booting back to the live USB.
For people that do like the syntax and don’t mind DSLs, it’s pretty great and it’s excellent that the ideas have been propagating elsewhere. I love the concepts but not the implementation.
I really wish everyone thought like that, but I still see people recommending Nix, Arch, Void… and some go the ideological route and start recommending systemd-less only like Artix or ranting against anything that uses Flatpak. Those discussions can get messy, and they always alienate the person who asked. Unfortunately those with ideological reasons are always the loudest and present in basically every “Beginner’s Help” group.
I wouldn’t recommend vanilla Arch only because of the installation process. CachyOS that simplifies it is an extremely good pick for a person who already knows what a computer is, but wants to try a proper OS.
Arch mostly got it’s reputation in the early days. Today some things are a lot easier to do on Arch than on other distros, especially because AUR exists. Also, it built one of the best wikis over all that time.
Weird way to spell EndeavorOS
EndeavorOS? Yay!
Weird way to spell EndeavorOS
With the missing ‘U’? I know, right? But it’s not weird; it’s just American, so it rewrites its history.
The devs of the OS spell it Endeavour. It’s one of those words that’s spelled slightly different in various parts of the English-speaking sphere. As it functions as a name here, I have no problem spelling it their way when referring to the OS.
For most people though yeah, Debian is rock solid, only went arch on my desktop for nvidia drivers (and HDR), archinstall really simplifies installing it.
Arch and Debian wikis are both amazing sources of information, highly recommend for any distro.
Of the last 20 or so people iv helped swap over to Linux in the last year. They have all ended up just going straight to either endeavour or cachy.
The Ubuntu family distro like mint or pop always have some kinda of weird hardware problem with something. Everytime with out fail. Seriously I love the Ubuntu descendants like pop and mint. When they work, they just fucking work and are rock solid. But their it just works scope is just too damn narrow compared to arch for the freaks I know.
It’s amazing how much weird ass hardware people use that with out something as large as the aur, you just aren’t finding a reasonable solution. Fixes exist but ones that a total idiot can just install are rare. And fedora isnt much better in that regard.
Fedora also just has… Problems ane a community that makes it hard to tell new users to Google solutions
That or the “app stores” confuse the new users or cause problems inside of two weeks. Im always baffled Everytime I get a call and someone has managed to break their computer via a GUI package manager or app store.
Cachy just has everything games want pre installed and even the most nontechie gamers iv known basically hit the ground running with it. I think part of that is because it works for the exact use case a gamer would want basically out of the box with as little fiddling as needed and arch is bleeding edge enough to actually run new games reliably enough people don’t fuck with shit and break it trying to make things work.
For the rest endeavour has had the best rate at actually keeping people from just going back to windows.
Seriously wild how good endeavours conversion rate is.
I wish. People recommend Arch to beginners all the time. And then wonder why there’s so many “Linux is too hard” comments everywhere
Arch isn’t necessarily hard. It just is unstable plus it encourages dated ways of doing things.
Those make it hard
And it just seems towering overall with the insane egos of some Arch users on forums. It’s a good distro, just setting it up feels so tiring.
Its weird because Gentoo is actually more involved but the community seems to have none of the ego issues.
They had the same problem when it was relatively more popular.
I feel like setting it up is easy (archinstall), maintaining it is the tiring part.
It’s not hard if you’re into doing Linuxy stuff. A lot of new users are not, or find diving in too fast intimidating. Like it or not Arch is definitely in the deep end of the Linux pool.
I swear, I’ve only recommended it to one newbie, and they were an engineer! I had a reason!
Hilarious that this is the new norm, though. NixOS is so not typical at all. Arch is more normal at this point.
NixOS consist of a bunch of options that you define using the nix programming language. Since it’s a programming language, everything is well defined and organised into single place.
Technically, someone could build a GUI configuration editor with sane defaults and clearly organised pages of settings, which generates a configuration for you. This could immediately change NixOS from the most tedious to a relatively easy to use distro.
They already built a GUI editor, but a programmer made it so it is actually harder to use than the text file
Lmao which is it?
There’s a list of GUI editors here.
But I don’t know which one exactly they were talking about
Nixos conf editor, it shows less of the config on screen than a text editor
And windows users are well known for their mastery of esoteric programming languages. Such as… um… ah… batch files, which, well, some of them can write. If they’re not more than four or five lines.
But that counts, right?Linux users can’t regedit. Regedit uses some weird programming language only known to a few windows grand masters.
It basically represents values with 16 possible symbols, ranging from 0 to f. We call it sixteendecimal. Very advanced. But nobody knows what they mean yet.
This should give you linux users a pause the next time you belittle windows users for their lack of computer knowledge!
Batch files¹, powershell, visual basic if you use Office, Lisp if you used AutoCAD back when macros were written in Lisp… 🤷♂️
¹- And, frankly, I doubt setting up NixOS is particularly more complex than setting up an autoexec.bat boot menu back when some programs (well, games are programs) wanted extended memory and some others wanted expanded memory (couldn’t have both modes at the same time, of course), and you had to make sure the drivers loaded in the most optimal order (which could vary depending on the aforementioned memory expanders, and which drivers the specific game actually needed) to fit as many as possible of them and DOS in high memory leaving as much as possible of the 640KB of system RAM free for the program… and I’m not even getting into the whole IRQ thing for soundcards and whatnot… and we had to do it all without Internet, learning by trial and error, or word of mouth, or from magazines…
Spoken like someone who’s never used nix before lol.
Good luck even having a question to ask, much less finding where to ask it
I don’t think I’ve needed to ask anyone anything when dealing with computers (except when helping someone with a self caused issue, of course, in which case the question is usually “why did you do this?”) since I was a little kid figuring out how to use my 286… I find that usually you just need to read the fucking screen (an extremely rare talent, I’ve come to realise), and in harder cases a bit of googling or, if push comes to shove, RTFMing seems to do the trick… but OK, we’ll see, I’ve been wanting to try NixOS for a while once I have the time, and my computer is getting old… maybe this summer I’ll find some time, better this than updating to Windows 11 in any case. 🤷♂️
I have an old MacBook for 2012, can barely open terminal, installed Pop!_OS, and I love it!
Am I a terrible person?
Nah, you’re killing it.
Pop!_OS has been my go to for years now. Always been so reliable and easy to use. This was the distro which kept me from going back to Windows
same here. always had issues getting nvidia drivers working on other distros, but pop os got me going out of the box.
I have MacBook pro from 2011 and it runs Plasma fine. It has 16GB of memory, though.
I’ve got an old Dell XPS system from 2010 with a Core i7 970 in it that runs Mint perfectly well.
Not at all. Pop OS was my Windows to Linux distro of choice, of which I stayed on for almost 3 years. It’s a great way to get familiar with Linux.
I only got out because I wanted to be closer to the edge, not because it was bad.
Yes, you are a terrible person. /s
I’ve genuinely never seen a single person recommend NixOS to a new user, unless they already had advanced technical knowledge
Are you new around here?
You could just look at my profile to see that I’m not. I’m also not new to Linux communities in general. Doesn’t change that I’ve never seen someone recommend NixOS to a complete beginner. I have (rarely) seen Arch recommended, but those recommendations will generally be downvoted and have many replies disagreeing. Linux Mint is by far the distro I see most often recommended, followed by Fedora.
What I see recommended nowadays is indeed mint, various Ubuntu variations, arch (always, although a lot of the time in jest), Nix fairly regularly, and as for the classics: SuSE and Fedora, they’re rarely mentioned.
As an experienced Fedora User, I recommend mint to newbies. Fedora having to add RPMFusion and figure out how to properly install the correct Nvidia driver can be daunting for a new user who is used to downloading exes. I love fedora though, and if it were not for that one thing I would be recommending it.
As an former Fedora and Mint user, now NixOS user, I reccomend Fedora to newbies. rpmfusion ain’t that hard since you only copy and paste commands and I’ve never had any problems with drivers. It maybe daunting but after installing the drivers, you don’t have to do anything else after. Fedora also opens up other possibilities to the Linux rabbit hole like ricing and its semi-rolling release.
I generally want to avoid telling people to copy and paste commands they dont understand, especially things like one line installs. I understand what you mean, and while you and I know there is no risk to using RPMFusion, a windows user should never be underestimated in their ability to screw Something up. (See: Linus Sebastian installing Pop!_OS) and most new users do not want to interact with the terminal at all. I feel like if we want people to start using Linux as a daily driver, the option to never use the terminal should be available to them.
Fair enough, although it was Pop!_OS fault due to a bug in Linus’ installation. It’s been fixed now.
I use Alpine, tbh I dont see why I should learn an entire programming language just for a distro
Alpine just feels like everything on my system is there for a reason (and somehow makes arch feel “bloated”) so I 100% understand wanting a full config file for everything on your system. But DAMN THE DOCS SUCK. Also NixOS locks you into systemd…
I keep seeing this sentiment, what’s wrong with systemd?
nothing.
It’s an ideological thing that says systemd bad because its not Unix enough usually.
Lmao gotcha. I won’t worry about it then. Currently distro shopping. 🙂
I have an old Laptop with a second gen i3 and 4gb of ram. Alpine runs very smoothly with Sway.
NixOS locks you into systemd…
Okay! Nix is out until it fixes that. What a fucking mess systemd is.
Because whenever I use apt or a similar standard package manager there is always some issue. For example, I start up an Ubuntu VPS and try to run nginx just to find out that Ubuntu 24 only has 1.24
And to get a newer version you need to do a bunch of steps:
How are these sources.list incantations any different from editing a configuration.nix file?
Why do you use Alpine?
Very old computer
Alpine actually isn’t more lightweight than something like Debian. You can use whatever you want of course.
I think Alpine is best used in a container.
I have this exact situation with my wife’s work laptop, which can’t upgrade to windows 11. The requirements are pretty simple, something that runs Chrome and Dropbox as well as Microsoft Office 2007.
I’m going with Mint Cinnamon for her (I use arch & kde btw) - was pleasantly surprised to see Dropbox now has Linux support actually, haven’t looked at it for years!
Almost everything she uses her computer for runs in Chrome.
Don’t use Office 2007 as it has major security vulnerabilities
If you don’t open external files there is no problem? We paid for it and it does the mail merge so that’s what we use. Been looking for Linux alternative with the same functionality and no luck so far, LibreOffice is almost but not quite good enough. Nobody else does mail merge from spreadsheet?
Also I’m guessing it will be more secure on wine
Wine doesn’t impact security what so ever
Now? i am pretty sure I have had dropbox on my linux machine like 10 years back, definitely back when AntergOS was still a thing and even before I remember having it
I looked it up there was an issue with btrfs just after they started Linux version which was why I stopped using it. That was a long time ago you are right, seems to be resolved now.
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There is also LTSC, which is much lighter than regular Windows 11, and does not have the ridiculous requirements.
Don’t tell my wife! I’ve been looking for an excuse to move her onto Linux for years. I’m the IT guy for our company and frankly if something goes wrong with Windows I’m stuck.
Her laptop “won’t work” with Windows after October, ok?
Imo a just works, deb based kde distro with nvidia drivers, flatpaks and no snaps is what we need to bring forth the year of the linux desktop.
And one that you can get pre-installed on devices you can purchase. The “just buy and be happy” aspect is important for a lot of people as well, not to mention the valuable customer support. People with dispensable income who wish for this are usually furthest away from hackerspace culture though, so a lot of Linux enthusiasts seemingly overlook it. Or, when it comes to far-left people around, want to overlook it.
If I remember correctly TuxedoOS checks all those boxes. And I think if you want “same but Gnome” that would be SlimbookOS. 🤔
Fedora KDE is not deb based, but dnf is better than apt anyway fight me
I don’t disagree but I still wanna fight, where do you wanna meet?
I dunno, we live in the age of ChatGPT. Between my generic but sufficient computer skills and ChatGPT’s hallucinatory ramblings, I’ve been smooth sailing on EndeavourOS for a few weeks now.
The EndeavourOS forums are also a really good help source if you wanna ditch the LLM, users there are pretty friendly and it’s probably where it sources most of it’s relevant info anyway.
Noted, thank you!
Big nix fan here, I love being able to define my system from a couple configuration files and not scrounging around the file system for the right dot file
Definitely solves more problems than it creates! /s
And also it let’s you do crazy things that would be impossible in other imperative distros tho.
I am thinking about root-on-tmpfs, conditional configuration and doing all sorts of crazy things with packages while remaining manageable.
It is simply another whole tier.
Debian/ubuntu/arch is easy to use even as a beginner, just try NixOS and compare.
Tap for spoiler
I use arch btw
Throw Mint Cinnamon or the latest version on the computer, solved. Ubuntu can… be speshy sometimes on my older spare laptop, but it is not really their fault, more my computer is a bit cooked. Some puppy linux distros are cool, but also a tiny bit complicated for beginners.
That was the reason I decided to install Mint Cinnamon.
It’s been impossible to install for a week now. And I’m not even 100% IT illiterate. After ~3 days of struggling, I decided to do the walk of shame and post on the Mint forum, admitting my failure. It’s been unsolved for about a week now. >100 fails and errors, crashes, freezes.
I can’t even imagine where I would (not) be had I chosen Kali or Arch.
Tbh you might have failing RAM or something. Have you run Memtest?
Yes, I have done a few things already, including memtest. I’ll copy from the forum:
The things I have tried:
- Updating my BIOS.
- The ISO I downloaded has been md5 checked, all fine. I have also tried 2 other ISO files from 2 other mirrors - same.
- Three (3) USB drives to install Mint, ranging from 8 GB to 24GB.
- Installing with or without multimedia codecs.
- Turning on secure boot before install (I was desperate, found a forum post with a similar error message, later I found out that it was for a different reason).
- Turning off secure boot before install (I found a different forum post where the exact opposite was recommended - later I found out that it was for a different reason).
- Installing in compatibility mode.
- Offering a sacrifice to Xebeth’Qlu, tormentor of souls.
- Running gparted before install, deleting the previously half-installed partition, formatting it myself to ext4, then running the installer.
- Splitting the aforementioned partition into a 16GB swap partition (I have 16GB RAM) and leaving the rest of it as ext4 (mounted at “/”).
- Running chkdsk -f on the SSD containing the MBR+Win10, then rebooting the PC twice, according to one of the error messages in my post below (then trying to install again).
Might sound like a dumb Q but have you tried testing any of the live environments or are you jumping straight to the install, and if you have played in the env. for a bit, have you tried installing any other distro? (Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian etc)
If by live environment you mean the one running from the USB (before I start the actual install) then yes, the install itself starts from a live Mint, running from the USB already. Sorry, I’m not sure if that’s what you meant.
Yup thats exactly what I meant. If you play with it on the USB for a while, do you notice any problems at all or is it only after install?
I have played around before trying to install a few times, but I’m not sure if that exhausts the question: I brought up two terminal windows to ssh into my Raspberry Pi and to manage logs on the other, while I had a browser up to look up netcat usage examples. It didn’t freeze or crash during regular activity, if we’re looking for that.
