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>there are certain desktop things I don't enjoy messing with at all One of the advantages of NixOS model. hardware.pulseaudio.enable = true; hardware.bl

>there are certain desktop things I don't enjoy messing with at all One of the advantages of NixOS model. hardware.pulseaudio.enable = true; hardware.bluetooth.enable = true; services.blueman.enable = true; #for systray applet They work fine and are wm/de independent. As for displays, I simply use `arandr`. Can even save/apply layouts for specific setups.

jstanley 4y ago
I'm not saying you're lying (I'm sure you're not), but... colour me skeptical. This sounds too good to be true. Can you explain how audio and bluetooth works independently of the desktop session? Does it need custom support compiled in to every window manager? If it's so easy to do it independently of the desktop session, why does Ubuntu etc. make it dependent on the desktop session? I had assumed that it was something like the desktop session needing to set up environment variables so that all your applications knew how to talk to PulseAudio.
- JamesSwift 4y ago
  From the documentation on the PulseAudio module (the nix term for those 'enable = true' things) [1]: > Explicit PulseAudio support in applications > Normally, the system-wide ALSA configuration (/etc/asound.conf) redirects the audio of applications which use the ALSA API through PulseAudio. For this reason, most applications do not need to be PulseAudio-aware. Some NixOS packages can be built with explicit PulseAudio support which is disabled by default. This support can be enabled in all applicable packages by setting: > nixpkgs.config.pulseaudio = true; [1] - https://nixos.wiki/wiki/PulseAudio https://nixos.wiki/wiki/PulseAudio
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
  I can't answer your questions about why Ubuntu ties sound to desktop session, but i can say audio and bluetooth in NixOS has been that trivially easy and worked on 8 different machines of mine and friends without issue.
- chriswarbo 4y ago
  > If it's so easy Note that the parent is only changing a config option; there may be all sorts of logic behind the scenes which branch on that value, e.g. to splice different text into /etc files, to add compile flags to package builds, etc. ;)
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  From starting up the session on the login manager to the final state of it there're various intermediate steps. Full desktop environments (GNOME and KDE) will load everything needed for you whereas when running a window manager alone you've to do it yourself. Those Nix options set up things (essentially abstracting what you'll have done manually) in some previous step (before starting the window manager). >why does Ubuntu etc. make it dependent on the desktop session Because what if you didn't want them? Non-Nix systems don't have this centralized configuration model therefore they cannot provide this flexibility. Therefore they just let each session to load what it needs.
heywoodlh 4y ago
I really like NixOS (I just barely distro-hopped away from NixOS back to Arch). One reason I switched away is because similar to my i3 setup I would find myself tweaking my actual desktop/system more than getting work done. Mostly because I haven't sat down for a few hours to become more familiar with Nix's declarative language -- but I kind of don't Nix's language and think it is far from intuitive for me. For reference, here's my nixpkgs repo (galaxy-chromebook is my most recent config): https://github.com/heywoodlh/nixpkgs https://github.com/heywoodlh/nixpkgs

jstanley 4y ago

I'm not saying you're lying (I'm sure you're not), but... colour me skeptical. This sounds too good to be true. Can you explain how audio and bluetooth works independently of the desktop session? Does it need custom support compiled in to every window manager? If it's so easy to do it independently of the desktop session, why does Ubuntu etc. make it dependent on the desktop session? I had assumed that it was something like the desktop session needing to set up environment variables so that all your applications knew how to talk to PulseAudio.

JamesSwift 4y ago
From the documentation on the PulseAudio module (the nix term for those 'enable = true' things) [1]: > Explicit PulseAudio support in applications > Normally, the system-wide ALSA configuration (/etc/asound.conf) redirects the audio of applications which use the ALSA API through PulseAudio. For this reason, most applications do not need to be PulseAudio-aware. Some NixOS packages can be built with explicit PulseAudio support which is disabled by default. This support can be enabled in all applicable packages by setting: > nixpkgs.config.pulseaudio = true; [1] - https://nixos.wiki/wiki/PulseAudio https://nixos.wiki/wiki/PulseAudio
ParetoOptimal 4y ago
I can't answer your questions about why Ubuntu ties sound to desktop session, but i can say audio and bluetooth in NixOS has been that trivially easy and worked on 8 different machines of mine and friends without issue.
chriswarbo 4y ago
> If it's so easy Note that the parent is only changing a config option; there may be all sorts of logic behind the scenes which branch on that value, e.g. to splice different text into /etc files, to add compile flags to package builds, etc. ;)
forgotpwd16 4y ago
From starting up the session on the login manager to the final state of it there're various intermediate steps. Full desktop environments (GNOME and KDE) will load everything needed for you whereas when running a window manager alone you've to do it yourself. Those Nix options set up things (essentially abstracting what you'll have done manually) in some previous step (before starting the window manager). >why does Ubuntu etc. make it dependent on the desktop session Because what if you didn't want them? Non-Nix systems don't have this centralized configuration model therefore they cannot provide this flexibility. Therefore they just let each session to load what it needs.

heywoodlh 4y ago

I really like NixOS (I just barely distro-hopped away from NixOS back to Arch). One reason I switched away is because similar to my i3 setup I would find myself tweaking my actual desktop/system more than getting work done. Mostly because I haven't sat down for a few hours to become more familiar with Nix's declarative language -- but I kind of don't Nix's language and think it is far from intuitive for me. For reference, here's my nixpkgs repo (galaxy-chromebook is my most recent config): https://github.com/heywoodlh/nixpkgs https://github.com/heywoodlh/nixpkgs