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Not even a mention of NixOS. May I ask why not? Edit: I'm appreciating the feedback for "why not?" and am sending it around to people in the community. :)

by grhmc 10y ago

notheguyouthink 10y ago
(not the OP) Complicated, is my reason. I have a hell of a time making sense of the configuration syntax. NixOS is one of those "this has to be the future" things for me, but a future i can't currently use, despite wanting it. I hope someday i can make the switch. Also, Elementary is pretty.. and call me vein, but that is nice. Generally i want the OS to "just work" and pretty gives me the false, emotional impression that it will.
- grhmc 10y ago
  NixOS is what got me to switch back from Mac to Linux. Being able to copy someone else's config for my MacBookPro and have a pretty damn good, working system was incredible. It really opened my eyes. Perhaps coming by #nixos on Freenode for an afternoon could get you over the configuration hurdle? I remember I tried NixOS in a VM on a Thursday and was so smitten that I replaced OSX on Saturday. Edit: I really appreciate your feedback on this!
  - notheguyouthink 10y ago
    To add a bit more detail: It's not purely the syntax, but more difficulty finding API documentation to match "what i want to do". Eg, if i wanted to add a package, or if i wanted to add a custom package, what function would i use? (not a question directed at you). If i wanted to add a chroot, what would i use? What args are available on those functions? etcetc The documentation was a massive frustration to an already confused person. On top of that, it seemed every package/binary i wanted wasn't available in Nixpkgs, or was outdated in Nixpkgs - so i had to learn how to modify the binaries for pretty much everything i did. And, when you don't know what you're doing, this is a massive barrier to entry. I'm not too savvy on Linux and runtime requirements of binaries, so finding the requirements of a binary or setting up chroots for binaries that i could not modify was very time consuming. I spent most of my time doing that, in fact. The concept of NixOS represents time saved to me. Reproducible builds based on a idempotent config, awesome! But in reality, i had to figure out how to make everything i wanted idempotent, and it was just a massive barrier. I'm super smitten, i think the documentation just needs a bit of work. I would love to run it on my home server and also Nixpkgs on my Mac.
zachrose 10y ago
I've been running NixOS on a casual home desktop for about a year now. I'm in love with some of its big ideas, like per-project dependency files that mostly eliminate my need for VMs and container management tools, and being able to read my OS configuration in a single file. On the other hand, most of my work these days ends up as a Dockerfile and Docker images anyways, and the benefits of Nix package management could be had with Nix alone (not NixOS). So at the end of the day I'm running a slightly buggy KDE 5 desktop that I haven't invested the time in fixing. I have a cool package manager, but I'm using it with one global nix environment. Packages are not hard to find once I know what I'm looking for, but discovering those packages and their nix-specific names can be tricky at times. That said I'm new to desktop Linux, and it's hard to fault NixOS for most of the (relative) difficulties I've encountered.
- grhmc 10y ago
  Hrmm... if you have a bit of time to describe your bugs, I'd really appreciate it if you filed a bug on the issue tracker (github.com/nixos/nixpkgs.)
  - zachrose 10y ago
    Thank you! I'm honestly not sure which bugs should go with NixOS and which should go to some application or library that I can't figure out. A typical example: since installing a different video card, videos will play in Firefox but not Chrome.
secure 10y ago
I recently posted this in 3 tweets: 1. Switched my notebook from NixOS back to Debian. NixOS’s advantages are not actually advantages in my practical reality. 2. NixOS being such a niche distro makes it _such a pain_ to use random binaries from not-yet-packaged software, which I do often enough. 3. Also, the Nix packages I use are sometimes a bit broken. That also happens in Debian, but I don’t know enough Nix to fix stuff myself. Beware: I’m a Debian Developer, so my view is obviously biased. That said, I think the trouble I had is representative for trouble other people might have with NixOS. In total, I used it for about half a year, I think.

Not even a mention of NixOS. May I ask why not? Edit: I'm appreciating the feedback for "why not?" and am sending it around to people in the community. :)

by grhmc 10y ago

Not even a mention of NixOS. May I ask why not? Edit: I'm appreciating the feedback for "why not?" and am sending it around to people in the community. :)

notheguyouthink 10y ago

(not the OP) Complicated, is my reason. I have a hell of a time making sense of the configuration syntax. NixOS is one of those "this has to be the future" things for me, but a future i can't currently use, despite wanting it. I hope someday i can make the switch. Also, Elementary is pretty.. and call me vein, but that is nice. Generally i want the OS to "just work" and pretty gives me the false, emotional impression that it will.

grhmc 10y ago
NixOS is what got me to switch back from Mac to Linux. Being able to copy someone else's config for my MacBookPro and have a pretty damn good, working system was incredible. It really opened my eyes. Perhaps coming by #nixos on Freenode for an afternoon could get you over the configuration hurdle? I remember I tried NixOS in a VM on a Thursday and was so smitten that I replaced OSX on Saturday. Edit: I really appreciate your feedback on this!
- notheguyouthink 10y ago
  To add a bit more detail: It's not purely the syntax, but more difficulty finding API documentation to match "what i want to do". Eg, if i wanted to add a package, or if i wanted to add a custom package, what function would i use? (not a question directed at you). If i wanted to add a chroot, what would i use? What args are available on those functions? etcetc The documentation was a massive frustration to an already confused person. On top of that, it seemed every package/binary i wanted wasn't available in Nixpkgs, or was outdated in Nixpkgs - so i had to learn how to modify the binaries for pretty much everything i did. And, when you don't know what you're doing, this is a massive barrier to entry. I'm not too savvy on Linux and runtime requirements of binaries, so finding the requirements of a binary or setting up chroots for binaries that i could not modify was very time consuming. I spent most of my time doing that, in fact. The concept of NixOS represents time saved to me. Reproducible builds based on a idempotent config, awesome! But in reality, i had to figure out how to make everything i wanted idempotent, and it was just a massive barrier. I'm super smitten, i think the documentation just needs a bit of work. I would love to run it on my home server and also Nixpkgs on my Mac.

zachrose 10y ago

I've been running NixOS on a casual home desktop for about a year now. I'm in love with some of its big ideas, like per-project dependency files that mostly eliminate my need for VMs and container management tools, and being able to read my OS configuration in a single file. On the other hand, most of my work these days ends up as a Dockerfile and Docker images anyways, and the benefits of Nix package management could be had with Nix alone (not NixOS). So at the end of the day I'm running a slightly buggy KDE 5 desktop that I haven't invested the time in fixing. I have a cool package manager, but I'm using it with one global nix environment. Packages are not hard to find once I know what I'm looking for, but discovering those packages and their nix-specific names can be tricky at times. That said I'm new to desktop Linux, and it's hard to fault NixOS for most of the (relative) difficulties I've encountered.

grhmc 10y ago
Hrmm... if you have a bit of time to describe your bugs, I'd really appreciate it if you filed a bug on the issue tracker (github.com/nixos/nixpkgs.)
- zachrose 10y ago
  Thank you! I'm honestly not sure which bugs should go with NixOS and which should go to some application or library that I can't figure out. A typical example: since installing a different video card, videos will play in Firefox but not Chrome.

secure 10y ago

I recently posted this in 3 tweets: 1. Switched my notebook from NixOS back to Debian. NixOS’s advantages are not actually advantages in my practical reality. 2. NixOS being such a niche distro makes it _such a pain_ to use random binaries from not-yet-packaged software, which I do often enough. 3. Also, the Nix packages I use are sometimes a bit broken. That also happens in Debian, but I don’t know enough Nix to fix stuff myself. Beware: I’m a Debian Developer, so my view is obviously biased. That said, I think the trouble I had is representative for trouble other people might have with NixOS. In total, I used it for about half a year, I think.