4 ms·

I'd like to try it but to be honest I'm a bit too lazy to go through with the current install process. If they were to adopt the calamares installer though, or

I'd like to try it but to be honest I'm a bit too lazy to go through with the current install process. If they were to adopt the calamares installer though, or develop their own graphical install, I'd love to give it a try. Same with Void.

adamtulinius 7y ago
In my opinion that would only be useful to help with creating partitions and file systems. The rest of the install process is basically creating your system configuration (and there's a helper tool for that), and a single command to perform the install. What do you think a graphical installer should do for the user?
- k__ 7y ago
  I think maybe a wizard would help? Like, you choose the type of the PC and then it takes you through some steps to get the right config and packages going.
Filligree 7y ago
While it would be possible to do that... to be quite honest, if the current install process is enough to drive you away then you'd have a horrible time using it. NixOS is definitely the perfect OS for fiddlers. Practically nothing is usable without at least some minor tweaks, but once you've tweaked it you won't later lose those tweaks. For anyone who stopped enjoying that after redoing the same config for the fifth time, it's great.
jolmg 7y ago
I can't remember what the install process of NixOS is like, but I just wanted to say that I absolutely love Archlinux's installation process. The live-cd just drops you in a command line with an ~/install.txt file explaining the steps you have to do to install the distro. It quickly educates you what a distro installation consists of, instead of just hiding everything behind a wizard. If I ever want to change anything I set during installation, I don't need to re-install like I would have thought before, I just need to redo whatever step involves the thing I want to change. It also quickly enables you to do a greater breadth of configurations by being exposed to the tools that perform the various steps and their configurations. That's instead of being limited to the options presented in a wizard.
- majewsky 7y ago
  IIRC the install process of NixOS is pretty similar, at least for the non-GUI ISOs. `pacstrap` becomes `nixos-install` and `genfstab` becomes `nixos-generate-config`.

adamtulinius 7y ago

In my opinion that would only be useful to help with creating partitions and file systems. The rest of the install process is basically creating your system configuration (and there's a helper tool for that), and a single command to perform the install. What do you think a graphical installer should do for the user?

k__ 7y ago
I think maybe a wizard would help? Like, you choose the type of the PC and then it takes you through some steps to get the right config and packages going.

Filligree 7y ago

While it would be possible to do that... to be quite honest, if the current install process is enough to drive you away then you'd have a horrible time using it. NixOS is definitely the perfect OS for fiddlers. Practically nothing is usable without at least some minor tweaks, but once you've tweaked it you won't later lose those tweaks. For anyone who stopped enjoying that after redoing the same config for the fifth time, it's great.

jolmg 7y ago

I can't remember what the install process of NixOS is like, but I just wanted to say that I absolutely love Archlinux's installation process. The live-cd just drops you in a command line with an ~/install.txt file explaining the steps you have to do to install the distro. It quickly educates you what a distro installation consists of, instead of just hiding everything behind a wizard. If I ever want to change anything I set during installation, I don't need to re-install like I would have thought before, I just need to redo whatever step involves the thing I want to change. It also quickly enables you to do a greater breadth of configurations by being exposed to the tools that perform the various steps and their configurations. That's instead of being limited to the options presented in a wizard.

majewsky 7y ago
IIRC the install process of NixOS is pretty similar, at least for the non-GUI ISOs. `pacstrap` becomes `nixos-install` and `genfstab` becomes `nixos-generate-config`.