Am I out of touch?

No, it’s the forward-thinking generation of software engineers that want elegant, reliable, declarative systems that are wrong.

  • null@slrpnk.net
    4·
    3 months ago

    NixOS is the most boring distro I’ve ever used.

    I configured everything across multiple machines and now it just works.

    • nullpotential@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      2·
      3 months ago

      Sure I guess if you can manage to get everything to work in the first place which involves following sixteen different guides across twenty-three different websites all of which with conflicting information.

    • Telorand@reddthat.com
      1·
      3 months ago

      How, tho?

      Seriously, how do you even get started? It’s like the tutorials are all, “This is a basic ‘Hello World’ module/flake. Now, you are a master.” I would love to figure it out, but I need a little more hand holding.

      • demesisx@infosec.pubOPEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        I HIGHLY recommend forking a nix-config that uses flakes, home-manager, and whatever window manager you prefer. Since Nix is so versatile (and the documentation of flakes and home-manager are BAD), I found it absolutely crucial to reuse a well-architected config and slowly modify it in a VM to sketch out my config until it was stable enough to try on a real machine.

      • jlow (he/him)@beehaw.org
        0·
        3 months ago

        Yeah, I’ve had the same experience multiple times, people have been raving about it but I can’t find a tutorial that is as noob-friendly as I’d need it.

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I went through a NixOS phase, and for a user that isn’t trying to maintain a dev environment, it’s a bloody lot of hassle.

    I’m all behind immutable distros even though I don’t particularly have the need for them, but declaritive OSs are kinda niche.

    • demesisx@infosec.pubOPEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      for a user that isn’t trying to maintain a dev environment, it’s a bloody lot of hassle

      I agree but I prefer it to things like ansible for sure. I’m also happy to never have to run 400 apt install commands in a specific order lest I have to start again from scratch on a new system.

      Another place I swear by it is in the declaration of drives. I used to have to use a bash script on boot that would update fstab every time I booted (I mount an NFS volume in my LAN as if it were native to my machine) then unmount it on shutdown. With nix, I haven’t had to invent solutions for that weird quirk (and any other quirks) since day one because I simply declared it like so:

      {
  config,
  lib,
  pkgs,
  inputs,
  ...
}: {
  fileSystems."/boot" = {
    device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/bort";
    fsType = "vfat";
  };

  fileSystems."/" = {
    device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/lisa";
    fsType = "ext4";
  };

  swapDevices = [
    {device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/homer";}
  ];

  fileSystems."/home/mrskinner/video" = {
    device = "192.168.8.130:/volume/video";
    options = ["x-systemd.automount" "noauto"];
    fsType = "nfs";
  };

  fileSystems."/home/mrskinner/Programming" = {
    device = "192.168.8.130:/volume/Programming";
    options = ["x-systemd.automount" "noauto"];
    fsType = "nfs";
  };

  fileSystems."/home/mrskinner/music" = {
    device = "192.168.8.130:/volume/music";
    options = ["x-systemd.automount" "noauto"];
    fsType = "nfs";
  };
}

      IMO, where they really shine is in the context of declarative dev environments where the dependencies can be locked in place FOREVER if needed. I even use Nix to build OCI/Docker containers with their definitions declared right inside of my dev flake for situations where I have to work with people who hate the Nix way.