5 ms·

It's just impossible to have the same level of configuration with your own custom script, NixOS goes way beyond: its configuration capabilities goes from your b

by dbeley 3y ago

It's just impossible to have the same level of configuration with your own custom script, NixOS goes way beyond: its configuration capabilities goes from your bootloader to user-level Firefox add-ons, and you have niceties like reproductability and rollbacks.

mksybr 3y ago
what? none of that is impossible for me to configure with a shell script? i install my userChrome.css to firefox with it, and i havent tried the addons aspect because my firefox account syncs them for me. since i run zfs i should get rollbacks too without learning a new language and packaging theory for guix
- dbeley 3y ago
  How do you install the userChrome.CSS automatically? As far as I know it needs to be placed in a folder containing a hash that's only generated at firefox first launch. At some point if you want to configure everything with your own shell script it will be a nightmare to maintain, NixOS is easy to learn in comparison.
  - Arnavion 3y ago
    You can generate the metadata in ~/.mozilla/firefox (installs.ini, profiles.ini) to have whatever profile dirs you want. Only if you let FF generate them itself will they have the unknown random names.
  - mksybr 3y ago
    i just glob over *.default and *.default-release `mkdir -p chrome` and move it there then check if my user.js has the setting that enables legacy userchrome (via grep, (useless) cat, and pipe), and if not add it. wouldnt guix do something similar if it managed my userChrome.css? i am not sold on the maintainability delta between my script and a guix one, but i only use a text editor, a terminal emulator and two web browsers for 90% of my use, so maybe im just too small scale to run into the maintainability issue it's trying to solve. the main struggle i have is in making the config files, and guix would only add another layer to that. easy to learn might be a valid consideration for me if i didn't already feel comfortable with scripts of the normal non guix variety, but the devil i know does fine.
    - dbeley 3y ago
      NixOS is overriding the profile name by using your username so the name is not auto-generated anymore (NixOS hates that) so it knows the user profile will always be at ~/.mozilla/firefox/USERNAME. It automatically creates a ~ /.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini with a custom profile.
      - mksybr 3y ago
        That's a nice small benefit that seems dwarfed by the increase of complexity, but maybe I am blind to my death of a million paper cuts that I've grown used to. Maybe I'll update my script to use named instead of randomly generated profiles, though. What does it do for multiple profiles?
        dbeley 3y ago
        You can specify as many profiles as you want, you have a property called firefox.profiles that can be an array and you would declare as many settings you would want in it. They still need to be names though (either through a variable like an username or a name you would set yourself).
        kaba0 3y ago
        It’s increasine in complexity when you are writing shell scripts, it is not when you have a proper system in place that provides a sane abstraction/interface for defining such configurations.
        mksybr 3y ago
        Guix is a huge upfront increase of complexity for someone who already has a shell script to do the same thing.
- kaba0 3y ago
  It’s possible as in you have a Turing-complete set of tools. You would basically have to recreate something like Nix for it to properly work, and would only end up with a much worse version of it, without the huge amount of work that goes into it (both the core, but especially the “wide ranging software support” part).
  - mksybr 3y ago
    a set of tools that wont fade away, its much harder to believe that about nixlang than its for bash/dash/sh i dont have to recreate nix to get easy customized installs, my installer script doesnt need to know or do anything about derivations, monads, flakes, etc. it just uses packages from my distro and pulls in my .config directory. what else does nix do that my script should do? the software my script installs is probably more supported than it would be on nix because its on ubuntu, one of the more commonly supported distros.
    - pxc 3y ago
      > monads Nixlang doesn't have a type system sufficient to encode monads, so you don't have to worry about it ;) > tools that wont fade away, its much harder to believe that about nixlang than its for bash/dash/sh Bash has been around for over 34 years, which is very respectable. But Nixlang has also already been here for more than 20. > the software my script installs is probably more supported than it would be on nix because its on ubuntu, one of the more commonly supported distros wat? Nix runs on Ubuntu just fine...
    - kaba0 3y ago
      It doesn’t have to go away when your alternative won’t work correctly in the first place and will collapse under its weight.

by dbeley 3y ago

mksybr 3y ago

what? none of that is impossible for me to configure with a shell script? i install my userChrome.css to firefox with it, and i havent tried the addons aspect because my firefox account syncs them for me. since i run zfs i should get rollbacks too without learning a new language and packaging theory for guix

dbeley 3y ago
How do you install the userChrome.CSS automatically? As far as I know it needs to be placed in a folder containing a hash that's only generated at firefox first launch. At some point if you want to configure everything with your own shell script it will be a nightmare to maintain, NixOS is easy to learn in comparison.
- Arnavion 3y ago
  You can generate the metadata in ~/.mozilla/firefox (installs.ini, profiles.ini) to have whatever profile dirs you want. Only if you let FF generate them itself will they have the unknown random names.
- mksybr 3y ago
  i just glob over *.default and *.default-release `mkdir -p chrome` and move it there then check if my user.js has the setting that enables legacy userchrome (via grep, (useless) cat, and pipe), and if not add it. wouldnt guix do something similar if it managed my userChrome.css? i am not sold on the maintainability delta between my script and a guix one, but i only use a text editor, a terminal emulator and two web browsers for 90% of my use, so maybe im just too small scale to run into the maintainability issue it's trying to solve. the main struggle i have is in making the config files, and guix would only add another layer to that. easy to learn might be a valid consideration for me if i didn't already feel comfortable with scripts of the normal non guix variety, but the devil i know does fine.
  - dbeley 3y ago
    NixOS is overriding the profile name by using your username so the name is not auto-generated anymore (NixOS hates that) so it knows the user profile will always be at ~/.mozilla/firefox/USERNAME. It automatically creates a ~ /.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini with a custom profile.
    - mksybr 3y ago
      That's a nice small benefit that seems dwarfed by the increase of complexity, but maybe I am blind to my death of a million paper cuts that I've grown used to. Maybe I'll update my script to use named instead of randomly generated profiles, though. What does it do for multiple profiles?
      - dbeley 3y ago
        You can specify as many profiles as you want, you have a property called firefox.profiles that can be an array and you would declare as many settings you would want in it. They still need to be names though (either through a variable like an username or a name you would set yourself).
      - kaba0 3y ago
        It’s increasine in complexity when you are writing shell scripts, it is not when you have a proper system in place that provides a sane abstraction/interface for defining such configurations.
        mksybr 3y ago
        Guix is a huge upfront increase of complexity for someone who already has a shell script to do the same thing.
kaba0 3y ago
It’s possible as in you have a Turing-complete set of tools. You would basically have to recreate something like Nix for it to properly work, and would only end up with a much worse version of it, without the huge amount of work that goes into it (both the core, but especially the “wide ranging software support” part).
- mksybr 3y ago
  a set of tools that wont fade away, its much harder to believe that about nixlang than its for bash/dash/sh i dont have to recreate nix to get easy customized installs, my installer script doesnt need to know or do anything about derivations, monads, flakes, etc. it just uses packages from my distro and pulls in my .config directory. what else does nix do that my script should do? the software my script installs is probably more supported than it would be on nix because its on ubuntu, one of the more commonly supported distros.
  - pxc 3y ago
    > monads Nixlang doesn't have a type system sufficient to encode monads, so you don't have to worry about it ;) > tools that wont fade away, its much harder to believe that about nixlang than its for bash/dash/sh Bash has been around for over 34 years, which is very respectable. But Nixlang has also already been here for more than 20. > the software my script installs is probably more supported than it would be on nix because its on ubuntu, one of the more commonly supported distros wat? Nix runs on Ubuntu just fine...
  - kaba0 3y ago
    It doesn’t have to go away when your alternative won’t work correctly in the first place and will collapse under its weight.