Perhaps dumb questions inbound ;)
I use Arch because I’m strapped for time and my system is always moving.
-
2 minutes to install something? AUR probably has it.
-
Ten minutes of free time to look for a software that fits a new need? Try random AUR things (auditing PKGBUILDs is just twenty seconds or so).
-
If I need a tiny patch, I’ll just add a sed or patch file to the PKGBUILD. (Super easy, you barely learn any syntax cuz it’s intuitive shell.)
-
make && make install/meson blahblahusually just works. -
Wiki does the thinking for me if I need something special (e.g. hw video acceleration)
Buuuut update surprises can be a pain (e.g. Pipewire explodes Saturday evening) and declarative rollbackable immutability sounds really freakin’ AWESOME, so I’m considering NixOS for my new laptop (old one’s webcam broke). So I ask:
- How much can I grok in a week?
- I need to know Nixlang, right? I have a ton of dotfiles and random homemade cpp commands in ~/.local/bin that I use daily
- How quick is it to make a derivation?
- I
make installa lot, do I need to declare that due to non-FHS? Can I boilerplate the whole thing with someone else’smake installand ctrl+c ctrl+v? How does genAI fare? (Lemmy hates word guess bots, I know)
- I
- How quick is it to install something new and random?
- Do I just use
nix-shellif I need something asap? Do I need to make a derivation for all my programs? e.g. do I need to declare a Hyprland plugin I’m test-running?
- Do I just use
- How long do you research a new package for?
- On Gentoo I always looked up USE flags (NOO my time); on Arch I just audit the PKGBUILD and test-run it (20 seconds); on Ubuntu I had to find the relevant PPA (2 minutes). What’s it like for Nix?
- Can you set up dev environments quickly or do you need to write a ton of configs?
- I hear python can be annoying. Do C++/Android Studio have header file/etc. issues?
- What maintenance ouchies do you run into? How long to rectify?
- Do I need to finagle on my own to have /boot encrypted?
- I boot via: unencrypted EFI grub asks for LUKS password -> decrypt /boot, which then has a keyfile -> decrypt and mount btrfs root partition. But lots of guides don’t do it this way
Thanks for bearing with me ദ്ദി(｡•̀ヮ<)~✩‧₊
The “stable unstable” setup is a beautiful concept. Thanks for the dotfiles mention – I keep hearing “you need to rebuild if you edit a dotfile” but I guess that’s a myth encountered by people trying to nix too nixily, falling into said archetypal rabbit hole
Questions:
-
Does mixing streams “infect” other packages? I remember an old Gentoo thing where
~amd64unstable packages would want to spread on its own. Since it’s nix I assume that an unstable package will require a bunch of unstables but they’d be installed alongside respective stable versions – i.e. taking up disk space but not “spreading” per se
For packages its basically 0 time.
Is that really true for you? I assume you refer to the length of time it takes to copy paste a flake from online but how reliable is that really? And the other commenters mention that there’s still wrestling to be had for certain tools
Mixing release streams dont infect other packages but yes you will have multiples of a lot of dependencies. Thats the one thing nixos eats up pretty well but with modern storage it doesnt really matter. I have a 512gb ssd and only use about 200gb of it with nixos, vms and all my personal data. I havent thought about running out of storage in a lot of time. Tho your own usage may vary, i dont have many heavy packages other than a few design tools.
The zero time really is true, i just search the nix repo, add it to my config and rebuild. 2 mins. The only things ive struggled with are dependencies for building stuff but ive always been someone to struggle with it so i just started compiling in vms and now i just do it with distrobox. It works for me, i didnt even change my workflow from other distros but it may not work for you. I definitely recommend trying nixos out and if you like it you will love it. Just dont go too deep in the rabbit hole, i know people whos home is a temp directory and its rebuilt on every boot and their root is also rebuilt the same way. Dont even ask why or how 💀
I’m one of those crazy people with / and /home on tmpfs. Setting that up is very easy with Impermanence, but it does require some care and self control. That is precisely the reason I set it up: I have no self control, and need the OS to force my hand. Without impermanence, my root and home fills up with garbage fast. I tend to try and play with a lotof things, and I abandon most of them. With Impermanence, I don’t need to clean up after myself: I delete the git checkout, and all state, cache and whatnit the software littered around my system will be gone on reboot.
In short, Impermanence makes my system have that freshly installed, clean and snappy feeling.
The whole thing sounds scarier and more complicated than it really is.
