4 ms·

Nix is not great for casual Linux desktop usage - I tried installing the Atom editor, and cancelled when I saw X11 being downloaded. You might as well run NixOS

Nix is not great for casual Linux desktop usage - I tried installing the Atom editor, and cancelled when I saw X11 being downloaded. You might as well run NixOS in a VM.

frio 10y ago
How would you run Atom on a Linux desktop without X11? Honest question; I didn't think Wayland/Weston were far enough along yet...
- vetinari 10y ago
  He probably already had X11 installed and Nix was downloading duplicate libs.
  - davexunit 10y ago
    This is a feature. Nix is completely isolated from the host system. It manages its own dependency tree. Using libs and other things from the host system would be both brittle and nondeterministic, negating the reason why Nix is so novel in the first place.
    - aeosynth 10y ago
      ... except on OSX. Really I just wanted something to take the place of an Arch Linux AUR helper, the way Nix replaces Homebrew.
      - frio 10y ago
        Ah, I can understand the concern on OSX (or other Linux distros). Earlier in the chain, you wrote "Linux desktop" -- which, to me, implied using NixOS :).
- cm3 10y ago
  Wayland and Weston work and there's also non-Weston compositors (window managers) like sway, kwin, gnome and more that actually work decently enough with Xwayland integration for running legacy (X11) apps.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ramblenode 10y ago
It's hard to say what caused this without more information, but the flip side is that it demonstrates the power of Nix. Everything required to get Atom working--all the way down to something as basic as the display server--is explicitly declared in the configuration and can be downloaded and installed with one command. So although this wasn't what you intended, Nix was actually doing what it is supposed to do: acquire every necessary component (as per the specification) for your application to work.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Isn't generating and installing a dependencies tree one of the most basic tasks of a package manager, at least since apt and similar came about in the late 90s?
- electroly 10y ago
  This is true, literally, of every package manager that came before Nix and every one that will come after. It's fundamentally what a package manager is and does. This isn't the power of Nix -- it's table stakes.

Nix is not great for casual Linux desktop usage - I tried installing the Atom editor, and cancelled when I saw X11 being downloaded. You might as well run NixOS in a VM.

frio 10y ago

How would you run Atom on a Linux desktop without X11? Honest question; I didn't think Wayland/Weston were far enough along yet...

vetinari 10y ago
He probably already had X11 installed and Nix was downloading duplicate libs.
- davexunit 10y ago
  This is a feature. Nix is completely isolated from the host system. It manages its own dependency tree. Using libs and other things from the host system would be both brittle and nondeterministic, negating the reason why Nix is so novel in the first place.
  - aeosynth 10y ago
    ... except on OSX. Really I just wanted something to take the place of an Arch Linux AUR helper, the way Nix replaces Homebrew.
    - frio 10y ago
      Ah, I can understand the concern on OSX (or other Linux distros). Earlier in the chain, you wrote "Linux desktop" -- which, to me, implied using NixOS :).
cm3 10y ago
Wayland and Weston work and there's also non-Weston compositors (window managers) like sway, kwin, gnome and more that actually work decently enough with Xwayland integration for running legacy (X11) apps.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ramblenode 10y ago

It's hard to say what caused this without more information, but the flip side is that it demonstrates the power of Nix. Everything required to get Atom working--all the way down to something as basic as the display server--is explicitly declared in the configuration and can be downloaded and installed with one command. So although this wasn't what you intended, Nix was actually doing what it is supposed to do: acquire every necessary component (as per the specification) for your application to work.

icebraining 10y ago
Isn't generating and installing a dependencies tree one of the most basic tasks of a package manager, at least since apt and similar came about in the late 90s?
electroly 10y ago
This is true, literally, of every package manager that came before Nix and every one that will come after. It's fundamentally what a package manager is and does. This isn't the power of Nix -- it's table stakes.