Please use it for at least one week, as it’s a learning experience and not meant for everyone. It took me around a week to become familiar with Nix and Flakes, but I believe it was worth it since now I have to tweak things less often and my configuration’s decently organized.
You could make a private repo and set up an SSH key to access it. For example, I have my dotfiles hosted on Codeberg but it’s a private repo so only I have access to it (although I would not recommend putting unencrypted passwords, even in a private repository)
Although I understand if you mean not publishing to GitHub as I guess there has been some controversy and it’s owned by Microsoft.
This is my problem, perhaps not with nixpkgs, but nixpkgs:nixos-{stable|unstable}. Throughout history the call to fame for distribution is not all the fancy bells and whistles, but the cohesiveness and stability of the stack - the entire stack.
I’m not saying this is a flaw of nixpkgs, but rather a fair amount of technical debt on the of part NixOS maintainers and developers. It’s a vast movable system of modules, while being immutable at the same time. It ain’t easy. So more contribution is needed.
I’m happy that people join and help with that. I’ll still use NixOS and nixpkgs for embedded, specialised cases, even as servers, but I’m not going to run it on a workstation. But, I’m hopeful for the future. I’d like to run it, but not yet.
It’s not really necessary anyways, nix can run on any system… now onto my adventures of bringing nix to an immutable Fedora system without a container or VM lol
I will give it an honest try but so far I am upset by the software not working as expected.
And hell your documentation is lacking.
There is a single software center currently in beta to install software with gui. And the nix-env version does work well actually but the configuration.nix install is hardly documented and not intuitive.
You need to think about NixOS backwards. It’s like learning a new operating system. It’s extremely stable, hell it won’t let you update if something breaks, but it does feel like whac a mole at times
I could fix most of my issues by purging kde settings. And fixing the ownership of the home folder.
I could get working iscsi. And now I think I am happy with what is working. Screen tearing is a bit of a issue thanks to Nvidia and my 2 monitor setup, but it isn’t as bad as on other oses.
I love NixOS! Been using it on all my devices since January and probably never going back :)
It all sinply just works™! Don’t worry about configuration :) As long as you’re not using relatively obscure software, you’ll be more than fine reading the docs/manual :)
If you still want to use obsure stuff though, the community on matrix is very active and helpful! Plus most (interesting) projects have at least one or two very dedicated Nix fanatics (/maintainers) willing to help others :D
It all sinply just works™! Don’t worry about configuration :)
And how goes your gpu acceleration?
I didn’t know they upgraded from the user having to accidentally find out that they need nixgl, which isn’t even in nixpkgs, and then dig through open issues to find a solution that might enable them to automatically start programs with it.
As long as you’re not using relatively obscure software, you’ll be more than fine reading the docs/manual :)
Are alacritty and kitty obscure or have a manual entry? I couldn’t get either of them running.
And as for the manual itself, it’s so trash that the only instructions for declarative package management use nix-env and aren’t actually declarative.
All the needed AMD stuff is pretty well documented in the manual. I’m gaming on NixOS with even my “relatively old” AMD GPU.
nixgl
The only time I heard about needing that was when using plain “nix” (not NixOS), as in using Nix under any other OS, to run graphical applications. I haven’t touched nixgl at all, and don’t see the need for it.
alacritty and kitty
Literally my terminals (kitty is my main) + foot. Both working easily either under main NixOS config or Home-Manager. What’s supposed to not be working there?
Literally don’t know what your problems are/where they lie. I’m a Linux noob (don’t even have the patience for Arch Wiki + install), coming from Pop_OS to NixOS and I’m happy it’s all so easy. I’ve installed it on my main PC and two separate laptops and so happy to just share (basically) the same config on all of them.
I’m a Linux noob (don’t even have the patience for Arch Wiki + install), coming from Pop_OS to NixOS and I’m happy it’s all so easy. I’ve installed it on my main PC and two separate laptops and so happy to just share (basically) the same config on all of them.
I’m far from a Linux noob, and I gave up on the whole idea before even getting to GPU acceleration, because it was giving me too many issues. Different requirements I guess.
Fwiw I used nixos on my desktop for about 2 years and had zero issues regarding GPU acceleration. That said, I did have a modern AMD GPU, generally the easiest GPU to get acceleration working on.
The benefit would be: changing stuff doesn’t break it. And if it does you can easily roll back. Keeping the config file sets up a new installation like the old one without trouble. Somehow I don’t think you really need it if you aren’t distro hopping but I need it way too much.
Currently the trade offs are too big I think. Programs don’t work because of the atomic behaviour.
And the learning curve is steep even for Linux veterans.
My heart is always with Debian, but Bazzite is a surprisingly useable immutable OS. I would suggest using it for your core suite then use Distrobox w/ Debian for any apps outside of that. It’s so snappy!
You don’t need nixos for that. The only thing you lose is rolling back system configuration, unless you use system-manager.
Unless you’re doing scientific computing, or being a sysadmin for a company, you don’t actually need nixos. It’s at that scale that system reproducibility becomes important enough to offset the downsides. For everyone else, home-manager and a list of packages are more than enough.
The learning curve is not that bad, it’s just that the resources are a pile of burning garbage.
Also, idk what you’re doing with VLC, but ~/.config should still work AFAIK.
I did install vlc. I started vlc. I noticed completely wrong subtitle size. I went to settings and tried to change some and save. Vlc throws an error it can’t save the file, permission error.
I install vlc with flatpak. Same subtitle error. I go to the settings, I don’t get an error but the settings don’t change anything.
Also almost anything i do in the plasma settings doesn’t get saved.
And that shit should only be saved in the home folder.
I gave up on nixos long before getting to that point. On Debian I use apt for to install a few user packages like alacritty because of Nix issues. Everything else is pretty much the same linux experience.
The documentation is rare and the atomic behaviour seems to break my whole Linux work flow.
Which is a good thing I guess. But I can’t Google “how to do x on nixos” and get a reasonable answer. I get nothing. Or some weird forums where I don’t know what they are talking about.
I just took my first dip into it recently, and so far I’m really liking it. Doing almost everything from a single config file is awesome. I’ve had to google a lot of solutions, but every time, the answer was “add this line to your config file and rebuild.” That’s it.
I like the idea. And since I am breaking my system on a regular basis I love the possibility to go back or not break it in the first place. However I noticed some issues.
Iscsi isn’t working since the program can’t change specific files. Vlc settings can’t be changed and sth is wrong with the default ones.
Nixos makes things write only that shouldn’t be or there’s missing an option to make a new version by changing the file.
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