[HN Gopher] Arch is a gateway drug to NixOS
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Arch is a gateway drug to NixOS
Author : wasted_intel
Score : 24 points
Date : 2024-07-25 19:54 UTC (3 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (wastedintel.ca)
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree with the article.
|
| Arch is especially nice because it has best in class
| documentation and vanilla packages. The installation is a bog
| standard chroot and use package manager like Gentoo had for ages
| or an old school Debian. Arch is nice because it's as vanilla as
| a Linux distribution can be.
|
| NixOS is the polar opposite of that: basically no documentation,
| weird behaviours everywhere, custom configuration, custom file
| system. Pretty much as far removed from Arch as something can be.
| dscottboggs wrote:
| Yeah. As someone trying to find the time to migrate back to
| Arch from NixOS... I understand how Arch drives you to want to
| make things bespoke and just so and reproduceable, but NixOS
| adds a ton of complexity and problems without ever really
| getting there.
| wasted_intel wrote:
| This doesn't mirror my experience at all. I think the biggest
| challenge facing NixOS is the learning curve. There's a lot
| thrown at you from the start, and as you start to factor your
| configuration into separate modules, there's a lot of
| complexity you have to unpack.
|
| I've since migrated to a flake-based setup with machine-based
| variations (for my laptop and desktop), including easily
| swappable desktop environments. At a whim, I can switch
| between sway, hyprland, and gnome. This was mostly a result
| of me exploring/tweaking these without wanting to discard the
| configs; I always end up coming back to re-explore tiling
| WMs.
|
| My experience through all of this has been great. I've even
| done a full re-install on both machines when the xz
| vulnerability was discovered and the process was effortless.
| That includes lanzaboote for SecureBoot, LUKS, and out-of-
| tree git-based flake builds for custom applications I build
| from source.
|
| The one thing I found really helpful when starting with
| flakes was this repo that includes starter configs to help
| flatten that initial curve:
| https://github.com/Misterio77/nix-starter-configs/tree/main
| mattpallissard wrote:
| Right, plus arch is rolling release which lends itself to never
| reinstalling the OS.
|
| The installation on my laptop is on its 4th hardware refresh.
| Rsync or brtfs send to a new box, modify the partition UUIDs,
| rebuild the initial ram dish, and you're on you're merry way.
| keltor wrote:
| Arch is something a fairly non DIY user can easily conquer and
| use for many years and it will just work. As long as they don't
| choose to do anything exotic, they can use it basically forever.
|
| NixOS is nothing like that, there's limited docs, the docs are
| sometimes just RTFM that links to another RTFM and oh yeah don't
| be afraid of breaking userspace because userspace is doing
| something wrong. It's fine for some of us who can of course get
| shit done.
|
| Ultimately, I think some subset of Arch users who really wanted
| to be Gentoo users but weren't because "drama" and then NixOS
| scratches that itch.
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