5 ms·

Can anyone explain advantages this might have over, say, Synaptic?

by Cieplak 14y ago

gizmogwai 14y ago
As far as I know, Synaptic is not able to handle multiple versions of a given package simultaneously.
jerf 14y ago
I've been eying this as a replacement for Gentoo. I like it well enough for the configurability, but I tire of the way I'm rolling the dice every time I update a package. (Binary distros like Ubuntu have this same problem, just less so.) The primary use case for me would be enabling me to stay cutting edge on software, while making distro upgrades reversible. If my new kernel blew up my system, I don't go scrounging around for boot disks, I pick the previous image on next boot. I don't know of any other distro that can pull that use case off right now. Or any other OS, really.
- darkstalker 14y ago
  I don't see how this could be better than portage
- mappu 14y ago
  If my new kernel blew up my system, I don't go scrounging around for boot disks, I pick the previous image on next boot. Debian and Fedora's package managers both keep the last three kernels operating and in grub. (This is a hassle for me since Fedora has had a long string of updates since 2.6.36 which was the last one that gave me working r/w HFS+ support, and i have to keep removing the second-to-last kernel manually with the package manager.)
  - tene 14y ago
    FYI, there are a few yum options you can use to tweak this behaviour to how you want it to be, including 'protected_packages' and 'installonly_limit', described in yum.conf(5).
    - mappu 14y ago
      Oh neat, thank you.
  - 9mit3t2m9h9a 14y ago
    In NixOS it is about all the things on the system - if updated X.org video driver behaves badly I can simply switch to an older configuration and look for a solution when I have time.
  - jerf 14y ago
    That was an example. A bad one, I see. But it applies to any foundational library, not just the kernel. What's special-cased for the kernel in Debian et al is normal operating procedure for Nix.
9mit3t2m9h9a 14y ago
Atomic upgrades. Run an update, interrupt it at random time, reboot. With Nix, there is a very limited set of problems you can get due to that. FS corruption if you do a hard reboot, filesystem mounting problems if you changed your partition layout. But you cannot get a problem with a new libc being partially deployed - you either get new version of everything or old version of everything.
9mit3t2m9h9a 14y ago
Atomic upgrades. Run an update, interrupt it at random time, reboot. With Nix, there is a very limited set of problems you can get due to that. FS corruption if you do a hard reboot, filesystem mounting problems if you changed your partition layout. But you cannot get a problem with a new libc being partially deployed - you either get new version of everything or old version of everything.

Can anyone explain advantages this might have over, say, Synaptic?

by Cieplak 14y ago

Can anyone explain advantages this might have over, say, Synaptic?

gizmogwai 14y ago

As far as I know, Synaptic is not able to handle multiple versions of a given package simultaneously.

jerf 14y ago

I've been eying this as a replacement for Gentoo. I like it well enough for the configurability, but I tire of the way I'm rolling the dice every time I update a package. (Binary distros like Ubuntu have this same problem, just less so.) The primary use case for me would be enabling me to stay cutting edge on software, while making distro upgrades reversible. If my new kernel blew up my system, I don't go scrounging around for boot disks, I pick the previous image on next boot. I don't know of any other distro that can pull that use case off right now. Or any other OS, really.

darkstalker 14y ago
I don't see how this could be better than portage
mappu 14y ago
If my new kernel blew up my system, I don't go scrounging around for boot disks, I pick the previous image on next boot. Debian and Fedora's package managers both keep the last three kernels operating and in grub. (This is a hassle for me since Fedora has had a long string of updates since 2.6.36 which was the last one that gave me working r/w HFS+ support, and i have to keep removing the second-to-last kernel manually with the package manager.)
- tene 14y ago
  FYI, there are a few yum options you can use to tweak this behaviour to how you want it to be, including 'protected_packages' and 'installonly_limit', described in yum.conf(5).
  - mappu 14y ago
    Oh neat, thank you.
- 9mit3t2m9h9a 14y ago
  In NixOS it is about all the things on the system - if updated X.org video driver behaves badly I can simply switch to an older configuration and look for a solution when I have time.
- jerf 14y ago
  That was an example. A bad one, I see. But it applies to any foundational library, not just the kernel. What's special-cased for the kernel in Debian et al is normal operating procedure for Nix.

9mit3t2m9h9a 14y ago

Atomic upgrades. Run an update, interrupt it at random time, reboot. With Nix, there is a very limited set of problems you can get due to that. FS corruption if you do a hard reboot, filesystem mounting problems if you changed your partition layout. But you cannot get a problem with a new libc being partially deployed - you either get new version of everything or old version of everything.

9mit3t2m9h9a 14y ago