4 ms·

I agree. I attribute that mostly to NixOS though. It reminds me of the old Prince of Persia game where I could make a mistake, rewind time, and try again. I

by cma256 2y ago

I agree. I attribute that mostly to NixOS though. It reminds me of the old Prince of Persia game where I could make a mistake, rewind time, and try again. I find Ubuntu and others to be pretty fragile still. IMO, technologically Linux has been ready for years. If NixOS were packaged into an actual product experience it would be a great new entrant into the desktop operating system space.

tombert 2y ago
Yeah, NixOS is admittedly kind of game changing. It's pretty hard to go back once you've gotten used to it.
exe34 2y ago
I hate nixos, but I can't imagine using anything else ever again, because I like that when I screw up while trying to install something, the end result is a nop instead of wiping and re-installing.
- ericbarrett 2y ago
  Timeshift (included with Mint, but I don't think it's exclusive to it?) is a much more conventional solution—I believe it uses rsync under the hood—but it works very well for exactly this kind of experimentation. It can revert config changes, package installs, and even OS major version upgrades.
  - Technetium 2y ago
    Timeshift is not exclusive to Mint. It's important to note that it was archived in 2022, and therefore will not see fixes or improvements. I'm a big fan of Snapper as a replacement, and encourage everyone to explore it. https://github.com/openSUSE/snapper https://github.com/openSUSE/snapper
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  What does it mean to “screw up installing something”? Don’t think it has generally been a problem, though I could imagine a bad kernel module perhaps.
  - tombert 2y ago
    Can't speak for everyone, but at least in my case, especially when I was first learning about Linux, I'd mess up stuff with my graphics card driver or wifi card driver or something, and I'd get to a state where stuff wouldn't boot, or a GUI wouldn't start up. I'm decent enough now to where I'd be able to fix it, but when I was starting out I would sometimes feel that I had to wipe the hard drive to get it working (particularly before I had a smartphone, so when the WiFi went out I really had no way to look up how to fix it). NixOS is nice because if you get to a situation like that, you can simply reboot and choose a previous generation, and then figure out where you went wrong.
    - mixmastamyk 2y ago
      Ok, so like filesystem snapshots. However, since LiveCD/Flash images became a thing, I stopped worrying about the OS at all, just keep a recent backup of my /data partition.
      - tombert 2y ago
        > Ok, so like filesystem snapshots. Sort of, but only sort of. The filesystem is actually (mostly) unchanged for the backups. You have the /nix partition that can only really be touched by the nix program itself, and you have your root partition built based on the manifest defined in your configuration file. As such, every time you want to change anything about the system, you "rebuild" it, it stores a "copy" of the old root system, but since it's a cool lazy functional thing, it really only stores the diff's from the configuration, so they aren't terribly expensive, so it's not weird for me to have literally hundreds of generations stored on my laptop. Old stuff in the /nix partition isn't deleted until it's garbage collected, and a lot of stuff can't be garbage collected until the generation attached to it is removed. So it's like a filesystem snapshot, but only the system files itself, the actual stuff on the hard drive actually doesn't get touched. > However, since LiveCD/Flash images became a thing, I stopped worrying about the OS at all, just keep a recent backup of my /data partition. I actually kind of do that with NixOS too! My root partition is a tmpfs mount, meaning that every reboot is effectively a fresh root [1]. I have persistent volumes for my home directory and a few other things. To quote a friend, it's like a "new car smell on every reboot". [1] Followed this tutorial: https://elis.nu/blog/2020/05/nixos-tmpfs-as-root/ https://elis.nu/blog/2020/05/nixos-tmpfs-as-root/
- dizhn 2y ago
  btrfs+snapper+grub
dizhn 2y ago
Ubuntu Tumbleweed with Snapper gives you btrfs based snapshots integrated into grub. I think this is the better solution for most users since nix is not the most straight forward distro to use.

by cma256 2y ago

tombert 2y ago

Yeah, NixOS is admittedly kind of game changing. It's pretty hard to go back once you've gotten used to it.

exe34 2y ago

I hate nixos, but I can't imagine using anything else ever again, because I like that when I screw up while trying to install something, the end result is a nop instead of wiping and re-installing.

ericbarrett 2y ago
Timeshift (included with Mint, but I don't think it's exclusive to it?) is a much more conventional solution—I believe it uses rsync under the hood—but it works very well for exactly this kind of experimentation. It can revert config changes, package installs, and even OS major version upgrades.
- Technetium 2y ago
  Timeshift is not exclusive to Mint. It's important to note that it was archived in 2022, and therefore will not see fixes or improvements. I'm a big fan of Snapper as a replacement, and encourage everyone to explore it. https://github.com/openSUSE/snapper https://github.com/openSUSE/snapper
mixmastamyk 2y ago
What does it mean to “screw up installing something”? Don’t think it has generally been a problem, though I could imagine a bad kernel module perhaps.
- tombert 2y ago
  Can't speak for everyone, but at least in my case, especially when I was first learning about Linux, I'd mess up stuff with my graphics card driver or wifi card driver or something, and I'd get to a state where stuff wouldn't boot, or a GUI wouldn't start up. I'm decent enough now to where I'd be able to fix it, but when I was starting out I would sometimes feel that I had to wipe the hard drive to get it working (particularly before I had a smartphone, so when the WiFi went out I really had no way to look up how to fix it). NixOS is nice because if you get to a situation like that, you can simply reboot and choose a previous generation, and then figure out where you went wrong.
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    Ok, so like filesystem snapshots. However, since LiveCD/Flash images became a thing, I stopped worrying about the OS at all, just keep a recent backup of my /data partition.
    - tombert 2y ago
      > Ok, so like filesystem snapshots. Sort of, but only sort of. The filesystem is actually (mostly) unchanged for the backups. You have the /nix partition that can only really be touched by the nix program itself, and you have your root partition built based on the manifest defined in your configuration file. As such, every time you want to change anything about the system, you "rebuild" it, it stores a "copy" of the old root system, but since it's a cool lazy functional thing, it really only stores the diff's from the configuration, so they aren't terribly expensive, so it's not weird for me to have literally hundreds of generations stored on my laptop. Old stuff in the /nix partition isn't deleted until it's garbage collected, and a lot of stuff can't be garbage collected until the generation attached to it is removed. So it's like a filesystem snapshot, but only the system files itself, the actual stuff on the hard drive actually doesn't get touched. > However, since LiveCD/Flash images became a thing, I stopped worrying about the OS at all, just keep a recent backup of my /data partition. I actually kind of do that with NixOS too! My root partition is a tmpfs mount, meaning that every reboot is effectively a fresh root [1]. I have persistent volumes for my home directory and a few other things. To quote a friend, it's like a "new car smell on every reboot". [1] Followed this tutorial: https://elis.nu/blog/2020/05/nixos-tmpfs-as-root/ https://elis.nu/blog/2020/05/nixos-tmpfs-as-root/
dizhn 2y ago
btrfs+snapper+grub

dizhn 2y ago

Ubuntu Tumbleweed with Snapper gives you btrfs based snapshots integrated into grub. I think this is the better solution for most users since nix is not the most straight forward distro to use.