Perhaps dumb questions inbound ;)

I use Arch because I’m strapped for time and my system is always moving.

  • 2 minutes to install something? AUR probably has it.

  • Ten minutes of free time to look for a software that fits a new need? Try random AUR things (auditing PKGBUILDs is just twenty seconds or so).

  • If I need a tiny patch, I’ll just add a sed or patch file to the PKGBUILD. (Super easy, you barely learn any syntax cuz it’s intuitive shell.)

  • make && make install/meson blahblah usually just works.

  • Wiki does the thinking for me if I need something special (e.g. hw video acceleration)

Buuuut update surprises can be a pain (e.g. Pipewire explodes Saturday evening) and declarative rollbackable immutability sounds really freakin’ AWESOME, so I’m considering NixOS for my new laptop (old one’s webcam broke). So I ask:

  • How much can I grok in a week?
    • I need to know Nixlang, right? I have a ton of dotfiles and random homemade cpp commands in ~/.local/bin that I use daily
  • How quick is it to make a derivation?
    • I make install a lot, do I need to declare that due to non-FHS? Can I boilerplate the whole thing with someone else’s make install and ctrl+c ctrl+v? How does genAI fare? (Lemmy hates word guess bots, I know)
  • How quick is it to install something new and random?
    • Do I just use nix-shell if I need something asap? Do I need to make a derivation for all my programs? e.g. do I need to declare a Hyprland plugin I’m test-running?
  • How long do you research a new package for?
    • On Gentoo I always looked up USE flags (NOO my time); on Arch I just audit the PKGBUILD and test-run it (20 seconds); on Ubuntu I had to find the relevant PPA (2 minutes). What’s it like for Nix?
  • Can you set up dev environments quickly or do you need to write a ton of configs?
    • I hear python can be annoying. Do C++/Android Studio have header file/etc. issues?
  • What maintenance ouchies do you run into? How long to rectify?
  • Do I need to finagle on my own to have /boot encrypted?
    • I boot via: unencrypted EFI grub asks for LUKS password -> decrypt /boot, which then has a keyfile -> decrypt and mount btrfs root partition. But lots of guides don’t do it this way

Thanks for bearing with me ദ്ദി(｡•̀ヮ<)~✩‧₊

  • fool@programming.devOP
    1·
    9 hours ago

    So instead of commenting inside of nix files, you put nix files into .org documents and collate them so you can make your nix files an OS and a website and a zettelkasten-looking set of linked annotated nodes.

    That puts a stupid grin on my face (ᐖ )

    Dammit I was sure I was just going to stick with Arch until I saw this

    Questions:

    • You have home on tmpfs. Isn’t that volatile? Where do you put your data/pictures/random git projects? Build outputs? How’s your RAM? (Sorry if I’m missing something obv)
    • What’s your bootup like?
    • Another commenter mentioned difficulties in setting up specialized tools w/o containerizing, and another mentioned that containers still have issues. Have you run into a sitch where you needed to workaround such a problem? (e.g. something in wine, or something that needs FHS-wrangling)