Was just coming here to say that. The entire Ethos of Open Source is basically the people owning the digital means of production. So some people really not grasp that?
Actually, yes, the original FOSS movement had more right-libertarian roots than anything to the left, although nowadays some might see it as “common ground”.
It’s not going anywhere. Debian existed when I was a kid and it’ll probably still exist when I draw my last breath.
I know how to use it, since, once again, I’ve been using it since I was a kid.
It has all the desktop environments.
It fully supports systemd. I do not miss the unreliability, slowness, and complexity of what came before that. (Normally I wouldn’t mention this, but your former distro of choice exists solely for the purpose of not having systemd, so it’s relevant this time.)
Arch on everything, including servers. It’s just so easy to install everything via the AUR & configure everything easily. Plus the wiki is amazing. Although it is a pain to setup sometimes
Fellow NixOS traveller. I used Nix for work and never saw the appeal of a whole OA built around it but when I saw a tutorial with the declarative config I was instantly sold.
You know why reinstalling Linux is annoying? Because you have to remember (or write down) every piece of config you ever changed. Dark mode in KDE? Change it in settings. Some systemd unit tweak? Change it in /etc/systemd. Want to run some commands at boot? Use systemd (see above), or write an initrd hook (distro-specific). Need a specific version of an app? Need some files in /opt? Need certain packages installed? You better remember to do that!
In NixOS, you “reinstall” your OS every time you change a single setting, because reinstalling NixOS isn’t scary at all - everything that needs to be changed is configured in your configuration - just make sure /home and /var/lib are saved (and perhaps some other dirs, I have root on tmpfsand bind mount all persistent files I need to ensure I know what needs to be preserved on clean reinstall and what doesn’t).
Want to move it to a different PC? No problem, copy the files in /home and /var/lib and simply install NixOS using the configuration you already have on the new PC. Want to create a boot option with slightly different kernel or kernel options, or maybe even another DE? No problem, specializations got you covered. Something broke and you want to try an older version of your system? Just select it in your bootloader, it will “install” the old version of your system on boot!
And of course, this also means it’s easy to share configurations for specific use cases. Want to run on some specific hardware that doesn’t work out of the box? Perhaps nixos-hardware got you covered. Want a certain program set up? Maybe there’s already a NixOS option for system-level config or a home-manager option for user-level config, worst case you can write it yourself and share for everyone else in the community using flakes, and maybe open a PR to nixpkgs/home-manager. Want to share configuration between systems? That’s easy, put them in the same flake and write a common module shared between all of your systems.
Basically, if you’re fine with whatever comes out of the box in any Linux distro, you don’t need NixOS, but if you need configuration, if you run servers, it is a lifesaver. I switched from Arch, no regrets. I run my personal laptop, my server, which I effortlessly migrated from Oracle Cloud when they quit Russia, and my router on it, here’s my NixOS/home-manager config.
The only downsides are the learning curve and the fact that you can’t “just” run programs that expect a FHS layout. You can do it with workarounds like steam-run or appimage-run anyway, but overall be prepared to learn to package stuff for NixOS. Also if you have no experience with functional programming, the Nix language may be hard to understand at first.
Edit: home-manager is also available on all Linux distros and iirc even MacOS. Nix-the-package-manager is also available on all Linux distros and MacOS, and it’s useful for creating consistent developer environments, but it’s NixOS that really makes Nix shine.
Do not turn to the Lovecraftian package manager unless you dare. It consumes all, it is all. Your flesh and mind will be ripped in twine across dimensions… if you are a package.
If you’re binary your head will be ripped open and it’s contents modified to fit a new reality.
There is no package, nor source, nor binary that shall be exempt.
All shall be consumed, digested and brought to a new reality.
It will kill the old gods, as there will be only one package manager.
If you really want a true dumb TV, you should look into the commercial TVs
Personally I just get any TV and don’t connect it to the internet. I disable any popup interfaces/home menus as much as I can on the TV so I just turn it on and it goes to HDMI1 and that is all the TV’s interface needs to do.
I also disable alot of the picture altering features as well. My LG TV has some true motion crap that just made everything a little bit off.
For the most part the handful of TVs I have tried just work.
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