4 ms·

> The big cost about Nix/Guix that puts people off is that it eliminates a human-readable filesystem. The traditional layout is gone or empty, replaced by a ton

by pxc 3y ago

> The big cost about Nix/Guix that puts people off is that it eliminates a human-readable filesystem. The traditional layout is gone or empty, replaced by a tonne of folders under `/nix/` called stuff like `240-572-9837wfgjh234098672-_bash` and you have to just... trust that your path and so on will work and stuff will just get found somehow. > You have to let go of navigating your own filesystem. Your broader point makes sense in that I get how a user-navigable filesystem is attractive, especially in the context of store paths being exposed to users as they are embedded in binaries and scripts. But I think the above is an overstatement. Stuff on NixOS gets on your path the exact same way as it does on any distro: a bit of shell! Users can read through the `set-environment` script and the config NixOS generates for their shell in /etc and all that. They can check what binaries are on their PATH with `which -a` as usual. They can ask their shell where a given variable was defined using the usual tools it offers. And the human-readable part of the filesystem does exist, just on top of the Nix store. The symlinks under /nix/var/nix/profiles/... or /run/current-system/sw are about as human-friendly as Unix ever is, imo. Perhaps NixOS could do more to make those 'official', foreground them and document them, and even provide more loosely versioned paths to them like you suggest (making it easier to impurely manually build against them).

lproven 3y ago
I think you're missing multiple points here. Secondly, from my position as a tech writer (for about 25 years) overlapping for well over a decade with some 20-odd years as a software tech support person and trainer, I think you are dramatically over-estimating the level of understanding of the average Linux user. A Linux user can be expected to be a bit more clueful than a Windows user, but not much. They probably understand the concept of a "directory tree" and know that there are "files", some "executable", in "directories", one of which is "current", and stuff like that, but you can not rely on them grasping advanced concepts such as "search paths" and "links" (of different kinds, no less!) The idea that there's a second, "more standard" tree, and it's optionally overlayed on top of the flat software-managed Nix tree, made up of symbolic links, and that you don't need to know where things are because the software magically makes sure that the OS can find them... I'm sorry but after coming up on 40 years in tech, my reaction to that might be captured by the crying-laughing emoticon. You could no more explain that to the average distro-hopper than you could explain it to a Labrador dog. How it gets set? Don't care. A script is what I'd assume, sure, but that's no more important than the colour of the script's author's hair. I'm saying that, professionally, as a writer, I have now presented the concept to smart interested users that they let go of the filesystem hierarchy and just let the OS manage that, and I'd say about 9 out 10 of my readers responded "oh to h3ll with that! No WAY!" It is a step _much_ too far. It's comparable but worse than self-driving cars to these folks. To refer to memes again, you need the god-level intellect step of the intelligence meme: https://imgflip.com/i/45rmf2 https://imgflip.com/i/45rmf2 ... to grasp the concept that you don't need to know where files are so long as the OS knows. This is not one step too far. It is a two-year backpacking trip across all of Asia too far.
- pxc 3y ago
  > Secondly, from my position as a tech writer (for about 25 years) overlapping for well over a decade with some 20-odd years as a software tech support person and trainer, I think you are dramatically over-estimating the level of understanding of the average Linux user. This is easy for me to believe :) > you can not rely on [Linux users] grasping advanced concepts such as "search paths" and "links" (of different kinds, no less!) Those are required for understanding how conventional Linux distros work, too, though. So the users who won't understand $PATH on NixOS are also users who don't understand how $PATH works on Ubuntu. I will admit that there's a difference here in that you can have a very half-assed understanding of Ubuntu, and even a half-assed understanding of NixOS probably has a higher skill/knowledge floor. And maybe I've unthinkingly assumed that half-assed understandings are worth less than they really are, at least psychologically. I have a very half-assed understanding of how my car works, but having it not be a complete wonder and mystery to me does give me more confidence in driving the thing— even if most of my knowledge of how it works is too incomplete to be practically useful and I'll always take it to a specialist if it has problems. > You could no more explain [the Nix symlink forest] to the average distro-hopper than you could explain it to a Labrador dog. Maybe the average distro-hopper matters because the average Linux user is a distro-hopper. But I think distro-hoppers are kind of a pathological case here, because distro-hopping is precisely the habit of throwing your hands up, blasting away your whole setup, and clicking Next Next Next instead of learning how your system works. Of course distro-hoppers are going to struggle to understand how their distros work! To distro-hop is to enact a commitment to not understanding your distro!! I also wonder if this is really true, and this is probably the part where I am just naive. But a forest of symlinks would be super easy to diagram perfectly faithfully, and I think a visual aid like that could go a really long way for the average person. > the concept that you don't need to know where files are so long as the OS knows. Have you seen this article, posted to HN to some infamy, about how zoomers don't expect to know/care where their files are, and are in fact somewhat baffled at the very question of where they've saved something? https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc... I what that generational gap says for the viability (in terms of user acceptance) of the Nix store in all its ugly glory in the future. I want to be clear that I do think some of your suggestions for laying out the files differently (like Spack apparently does) are perfectly reasonable. There are technical and historical reasons that the store is hash-first, but maybe they're worth re-evaluating. Sometimes I think the real winner, some day, in terms of executing this idea beautifully and in a user-friendly way, will be on a 'brand new' OS where a different executable format and/or a different kind of filesystem can mean the Nix store or its equivalent doesn't need to be exposed as bare files at all. One Nix hacker has actually proposed doing something like that on top of the Linux kernel, but I think RedoxOS already uses some ideas like this.

by pxc 3y ago

lproven 3y ago

I think you're missing multiple points here. Secondly, from my position as a tech writer (for about 25 years) overlapping for well over a decade with some 20-odd years as a software tech support person and trainer, I think you are dramatically over-estimating the level of understanding of the average Linux user. A Linux user can be expected to be a bit more clueful than a Windows user, but not much. They probably understand the concept of a "directory tree" and know that there are "files", some "executable", in "directories", one of which is "current", and stuff like that, but you can not rely on them grasping advanced concepts such as "search paths" and "links" (of different kinds, no less!) The idea that there's a second, "more standard" tree, and it's optionally overlayed on top of the flat software-managed Nix tree, made up of symbolic links, and that you don't need to know where things are because the software magically makes sure that the OS can find them... I'm sorry but after coming up on 40 years in tech, my reaction to that might be captured by the crying-laughing emoticon. You could no more explain that to the average distro-hopper than you could explain it to a Labrador dog. How it gets set? Don't care. A script is what I'd assume, sure, but that's no more important than the colour of the script's author's hair. I'm saying that, professionally, as a writer, I have now presented the concept to smart interested users that they let go of the filesystem hierarchy and just let the OS manage that, and I'd say about 9 out 10 of my readers responded "oh to h3ll with that! No WAY!" It is a step _much_ too far. It's comparable but worse than self-driving cars to these folks. To refer to memes again, you need the god-level intellect step of the intelligence meme: https://imgflip.com/i/45rmf2 https://imgflip.com/i/45rmf2 ... to grasp the concept that you don't need to know where files are so long as the OS knows. This is not one step too far. It is a two-year backpacking trip across all of Asia too far.

pxc 3y ago
> Secondly, from my position as a tech writer (for about 25 years) overlapping for well over a decade with some 20-odd years as a software tech support person and trainer, I think you are dramatically over-estimating the level of understanding of the average Linux user. This is easy for me to believe :) > you can not rely on [Linux users] grasping advanced concepts such as "search paths" and "links" (of different kinds, no less!) Those are required for understanding how conventional Linux distros work, too, though. So the users who won't understand $PATH on NixOS are also users who don't understand how $PATH works on Ubuntu. I will admit that there's a difference here in that you can have a very half-assed understanding of Ubuntu, and even a half-assed understanding of NixOS probably has a higher skill/knowledge floor. And maybe I've unthinkingly assumed that half-assed understandings are worth less than they really are, at least psychologically. I have a very half-assed understanding of how my car works, but having it not be a complete wonder and mystery to me does give me more confidence in driving the thing— even if most of my knowledge of how it works is too incomplete to be practically useful and I'll always take it to a specialist if it has problems. > You could no more explain [the Nix symlink forest] to the average distro-hopper than you could explain it to a Labrador dog. Maybe the average distro-hopper matters because the average Linux user is a distro-hopper. But I think distro-hoppers are kind of a pathological case here, because distro-hopping is precisely the habit of throwing your hands up, blasting away your whole setup, and clicking Next Next Next instead of learning how your system works. Of course distro-hoppers are going to struggle to understand how their distros work! To distro-hop is to enact a commitment to not understanding your distro!! I also wonder if this is really true, and this is probably the part where I am just naive. But a forest of symlinks would be super easy to diagram perfectly faithfully, and I think a visual aid like that could go a really long way for the average person. > the concept that you don't need to know where files are so long as the OS knows. Have you seen this article, posted to HN to some infamy, about how zoomers don't expect to know/care where their files are, and are in fact somewhat baffled at the very question of where they've saved something? https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc... I what that generational gap says for the viability (in terms of user acceptance) of the Nix store in all its ugly glory in the future. I want to be clear that I do think some of your suggestions for laying out the files differently (like Spack apparently does) are perfectly reasonable. There are technical and historical reasons that the store is hash-first, but maybe they're worth re-evaluating. Sometimes I think the real winner, some day, in terms of executing this idea beautifully and in a user-friendly way, will be on a 'brand new' OS where a different executable format and/or a different kind of filesystem can mean the Nix store or its equivalent doesn't need to be exposed as bare files at all. One Nix hacker has actually proposed doing something like that on top of the Linux kernel, but I think RedoxOS already uses some ideas like this.