I assume the envisioned discussion was supposed to be

Q: Thoughts on the Orphan Crushing Machine?

A: The CDC says crushing orphans is bad for our health.

A: The government in Orphania is expanding the definitions of orphans to all seniors, allowing a cascading orphan-crushing effect.

where we all experience the same negative emotion in a fuller, mildly variable way.

But yeah, it’s kind of… predictable, isn’t it?

_{<thread> FOSS, big bad powerfuls, companies, governments, Stallman </thread>}

Too late, I asked algernon. O.O

but yeah I don’t think I’ll make my OS an absolutely pure mathematical function that I prove the correctness of at every boot _{cool af tho}

I do rely on correct dev envs so I’ll try my hand at nixos-shell -ing. Thanks for the input

So instead of commenting inside of nix files, you put nix files into .org documents and collate them so you can make your nix files an OS and a website and a zettelkasten-looking set of linked annotated nodes.

That puts a stupid grin on my face (ᐖ )

Dammit I was sure I was just going to stick with Arch until I saw this

Questions:

• You have home on tmpfs. Isn’t that volatile? Where do you put your data/pictures/random git projects? Build outputs? How’s your RAM? (Sorry if I’m missing something obv)
• What’s your bootup like?
• Another commenter mentioned difficulties in setting up specialized tools w/o containerizing, and another mentioned that containers still have issues. Have you run into a sitch where you needed to workaround such a problem? (e.g. something in wine, or something that needs FHS-wrangling)

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:

1. Does mixing streams “infect” other packages? I remember an old Gentoo thing where ~amd64 unstable 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

Thanks for the input!

I’m nervous about faking FHS as well, especially for specialized stuff. I don’t know much about steam-run or its caveats – so I can’t debug it (Maybe it turns out to be really simple and solid? Who knows…)

Thanks for mentioning the gpu accel issues in distrobox – I was considering using containerization to fight off any FHS issues but it seems I can’t jump the gun. I’ll probably just tighten dev envs by trickling in nix-shell usage; multiple versions of a package at once is an issue I’d def love to solve (in a way that’s more than just dockerfile)

Interesting that this is the third comment suggesting just using btrfs snapshots to resist Arch update experiences. I have root and home on two flat btrfs subvols so it shouldn’t be that hard to implement. (yeah yeah “What backup?” is bad)

Seems like the simplest way out is those two smallish changes. Wish I could transcend into declarativity but the thread’s nix survivor ratio is grim

Yep this is my diagnosis. I had a lot of time at the start to config horns and halos and miniguns and waffle toasters onto my craptop but now everything is constrained

o(╥﹏╥)o

When it comes to installing stuff, I’m very trigger-happy. So, from experience…

Installing stuff on Windows (safely)

• Hope it’s on Chocolatey (choco install)
• If not, search for the website online
• Scroll past the AI slop and suspicious Softonic downloads
• Click the website
• Find the correct download button
• Download
• Scan with MalwareBytes (don’t want an STI)
• Run setup.exe
• Verify PATH and wanted feature set
• I do not want to bundle Candy Crush or McAfee
• skim the Privacy Policy to see if they’ll grind my bones to dust
• Install Microsoft C++ Redistributable 2014-2018 (wtf? I already have 4 of these)
• Wait
• Sort the installation shortcuts into my folders

Installing stuff on Linux (safely)

• paru some_software
• If on AUR, skim PKGBUILD
• If not packaged at all (rare), git clone it and either skim the install.sh or Makefile
• Done

Sometimes friends, in their curiosity, come up to me and ask me, Jordan Belfort-style, “Sell me this pen Linux.” Why do I like it so much, they wonder?

And I always tell them:

"Linux is like… the vegan OS. (bear with me) Mac and Windows people don’t really care about OSes. People who switch to Linux either find they couldn’t be assed to deal with it, or they love it, and those who love it love it. Then they always tell people lol.

A good thing though: because everyone’s such an opinionated nerd, the lateral set of problems you run into won’t be ‘solved’ by random Microsoft Forums /sfc scannows or arcane regedits, but by a nut who debugged the entire thing 30 minutes after the bug came to exist to find a workaround. True story.

Buuuut Linux is more of a lateral movement in terms of problems, it’s just a tool after all. You solve Microsoft Recall and start menu ads but run into new but tiny annoyances. I find Linux problems easier to fix than Windows ones because of the nerd army thing but if your Windows setup works for you, it works and that’s really all that’s important. If you do start Linuxing though you’ll learn a lot just by osmosis."

And they usually laugh and decide to keep their routines in place. Don’t hate me vegans.

I use Firefox everywhere else, but for my Android I’m on Brave.

Sure, adblock and tab grouping is a plus but my main reason I use it (i.e. over Firefox) is because of memory. When I have six FF tabs open, my Samsung model shoots at least three down the moment I enter another activity or open a new tab. They survive on Brave.

I’d still use Brave on iOS devices too – as another commenter said, it’s a webkit reskin but at least it’s got good Adblock.