ani, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

I’d recommended Arch because with NixOS you end up having to tinker too much. Besides, if you need to use Linux for development purposes, Arch follows the usual Linux/Unix conventions, while with NixOS you would end up tinkering…And you can always use the Nix app from Arch.

Just use Arch with Gnome or KDE, that will save you a ton of time.

CatLikeLemming, 1 year ago

Huh, I never expected anyone to recommend Arch to me because you have to tinker too much with an alternative distro. I thought simplicity was the reason why people liked NixOS, no?

Deckweiss, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

I have set up my archlinux os in a weekend with btrfs snapshots and everything I need. About once a quarter I tinker with it for 30 minutes to either fix a broken update or do some custom solutions to minute problems. It has been running like this for 5years. And snapshots allow me to rollback any fuckups in 1 minute.

I tried to setup nixos twice, because I love the concept. Both times I tinkered with it for 1 to 2 weeks, had to take paid leave. At the end, some stuff still didn’t work as I wanted it to. Any customization that is not already natively implemented in nix is a huge pain in the ass to add. Things that would be a 5min config edit on arch took hours on nix to make them rEpRoDuCaBLe. I have experienced no additional benefit over btrfs snapshots.

Tldr: If I could pay somebody 100$ to set up nixos just the way I want it, I’d use it. But since I have to do it in my own free time, I won’t.

Auli, 1 year ago

Nix is a pain. Not everything works. Example Netword supposed to be able to put options in some confines. Sure most work but I have two in my config that nix well not put in. Why they are valid an I’m running them on my current Os but my nix van refuses to build with them. Another nftsble rules. Again supposed to put them in config file. But I have some nix does not like, completely valid rules but nix won’t build with them. I’ll tinker with it but it still needs work.

ani, 1 year ago

Comparatively, NixOS is complex, while Arch is simple. NixOS diverges very much from traditional Linux distributions, beginning with using a diferent filesystem hierarchy, which breaks a ton of apps, requiring workarounds like patches, simulating a standard filesystem… In the long run, you will have to deal with many NixOS-specific issues.

Because you’re going to Uni, it’s better to focus on having a mostly just works distro with updated repository, and that’s Arch. On your free time in the future, maybe try NixOS in a VM just so you have a feel for it. And again, you can use Nix on Arch so you use apps from Nixpkgs.

This all comes from an originally Arch user turned into an experienced NixOS user.

Kaidao, 1 year ago

This is my experience as well. I went back to Arch after trying NixOS for a few weeks. I just ended up spending way too much time tinkering with the system instead of using it. Also, I feel like a major advantage to nixos is only viable if you have multiple machines. I only have a main desktop.

fxt_ryknow, 1 year ago

I’m not sure I agree with this… I’m using nix on several different generation thinkpads, two older generation MacBooks (one air and one pro), two different older generation imacs, as well as my home built PC, and an OEM built pc… All with little to no tinkering whatsoever.

All my tinkering was first setting nix up and figuring out how to use it… Then I saved and copied my config and use the same one on all the machines (albeit with subtle changes on first install).

I’ve used arch a handful of times over the years, and it is without question, significantly more “needy” over time, imo.

ani, 1 year ago

Guess you never had to package general or hard to package software like those that require fixed output derivation or undersupported ecosystems, trying to use common development environment for Python under NixOS, running binaries under NixOS, the list goes on.

fxt_ryknow, 1 year ago

I have not… And in fairness to me, OP didn’t mention the need for any of those things. OP mentions having not even installed anything with the AUR in Arch, which to me just means they are looking for something stable out of the box, which nix has been for me across many platforms.

ani, 1 year ago

Fair point, I was mostly listing the major downsides IMO that OP asked for

XenBad, 1 year ago

I use NixOS for University and would highly recommend it if you want a highly configurable system that’s declarative, however, NixOS doesn’t have great documentation for certain features and usually does things differently, so you’ll have to learn the Nix way of doing things. On the plus side, I’ve never been unable to fix my OS when it broke, you simply rollback, or if there isn’t a suitable rollback, you can plug in a live usb and set the system to use a specific commit (can’t remember the exact command for this and that’s presuming you store your config with git). Also according to these statistics nixpkgs has more packages than the AUR.

just_another_person, 1 year ago

I think you just mean “declarative”. Highly configurable is literally any distro. I’d say NixOS is actually LESS configurable by design, but that is sort of the point: a repeatable image based on a template no matter what.

XenBad, 1 year ago

By highly configurable, I meant that you can configure it exactly to your needs, in the same way that you can with Arch.

lupec, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

As a recent NixOS convert coming from Bazzite (Kinoite/Silverblue with user friendly daily driver and gaming tweaks), and before that mostly Arch-based distros, I’d say it boils down to the tradeoff between having way more control over reproducibility and having to deep dive into the often poorly documented domain specific rabbit hole that is Nix. If you’re comfortable with going out of your way to learn, looking for examples, reading source code to find out what options you can use or how stuff works, it can absolutely be worth it but it’s a steep price to pay for sure.

I personally adore what Nix sets out to solve and find it extremely rewarding to learn. Plus, as a developer, I enjoy puzzling out how to get stuff done and don’t mind diving into the source if I need to, so it works for me. I’d absolutely prefer solid documentation, of course, but it’s not a deal breaker.

When it comes to software, the Nix repo has a staggering amount of prebuilt binaries ready to download (which you can search here) and it’s often not too hard to hack together your own reproducible package if you want after you get comfortable enough with it. At least for my use cases, I haven’t really missed much from my days using Arch and the AUR. If anything, I appreciate how much more consistent it tends to be in comparison.

If you, like myself, go for a flake (yet another rabbit hole within a rabbit hole) based setup and point to the unstable repo, you basically get a fully reproducible, easy to update and rollback rolling release not too dissimilar to using Arch with auto btrfs snapshots enabled. That’s how I used to do Arch and it feels pretty familiar.

Anyway, that’s what I got. If you have any more specific concerns or questions I’d be happy to elaborate!

Edit: I forgot to add but I find a nice way to get comfortable without fully commiting is using Nix as a package manager on any old distro. You could install it on Endeavour (I recommend this method) and play around with Home Manager, use it as a dotfiles manager on steroids, have it declaratively install and manage the CLI apps you can’t live without and whatnot, see how you like it. That’s how I started, I have a common HM config I’ve so far used with Debian at work, Ubuntu running under WSL when I’m on Windows and now NixOS itself.

velox_vulnus, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Using NixOS for more than six months, and I think I’m eligible to say what I like and hate about it.

What you’ll like:

• easy configuration - just refer https://search.nixos.org, it’s that easy. I’m not taking that comment about “NixOS being hard to configure” seriously - and this is coming from someone who hasn’t even learnt the language properly. Yes, my configuration.nix is slightly polluted with Starship configs, and I might want to break them into modules, but it is still a job done decently.
• won’t break easily except in some extreme situations - Laptop accidentally slipped from my hand during nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade - I guess it was the physical trauma to my device messed up the mount path to /boot, but it was rescued by a single CLI command from the recovery USB, and I didn’t lose any files.
• upgrade is not prone to breakage, and even if it does, you can rollback - just don’t walk while holding your device and drop it.
• it is a serious distro, not a “hobby” OS, and the experiences you will gain from learning Nix will help you with SaaS platforms like Replit or Railway, if you’re interested in using them sometimes in the future.

What you won’t like:

• Binaries do not work properly - since Nix store is a completely different storage system compared to your usual FHS, most of the binaries will suffer from incorrect RPATH and dynamic loader issues - you might have to autopatchELF them, which is kind of irritating. This is also the case for AppImages, by the way.
• Nix language is more like a custom DSL and less of a general purpose language, so you’re gonna have to use another language for automation (Shell, Python, Ruby), which might pollute your self-hosted Nixpkgs - Guix fixes this issue.
• The bad part about NixOS is writing Nixpkgs expressions. The repository is damn huge and it is hard to maintain spaghetti code, writing your own package can be pretty hard, there’s some “hack”-y stuff you’re gonna have to use for building in, let’s say, using buildRustPackage and buildDotnetModule, and you’re gonna have to work with a senior maintainer.

Honestly, if I had to avoid Nix, I would go for Guix, Gentoo or Devuan. But yes, if you’re a beginner, I’d ask that you refrain from touching NixOS.

tetris11, 1 year ago

Guix

+1, since for me it’s much easier to grok the language and the schema at a single glance.

Plus for those worrying about linux-libre kernel not having the right drivers for your hardware, non-guix has you covered and you can easily switch to linux-mainline. I’m really enjoying Guix a lot right now.

dario, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

After having used Parabola GNU/Linux-libre for more than ten years, I seriously considered moving to GNU Guix System. The only thing holding me back is that I saw some seriously out of date packages in the repository. Off the top of my head, GNOME was like three major versions behind. How do you deal with that?

velox_vulnus, 1 year ago

There’s a lack of contributors. Honestly, if not for the stupid recession and joblessness, I would have loved to dive into Guix packaging.

tetris11, 1 year ago

Its pretty easy to update the packages yourself, just bump the version and the hash, or if needed add some missing libraries.

Because the review process is slow, sometimes it’s easier to just check the Guix Patches buglist for existing submitted patchfiles and then add them to your tree

russjr08, 1 year ago

I’m a bit surprised to see that you disagreed with the “NixOS is hard to configure” bit, but then also listed some of the reasons why it can be hard to configure as cons.

By “configure”, they probably didn’t mean just setting up say, user accounts, which is definitely easy to set up in Nix.

The problems start to arise when you want to use something that isn’t in Nixpkgs, or even something that is out of date in Nixpkgs, or using a package from Nixpkgs that then has plugins but said plugin(s) that you want aren’t in Nixpkgs.

From my experience with NixOS, I had two software packages break on me that are in Nixpkgs - one of them being critical for work, and I had no clue where to even begin trying to fix the Nixpkg derivation because of how disorganized Nix’s docs can be.

Speaking of docs inconsistencies you still have the problem of most users saying you should go with Flakes these days, but it’s still technically an experimental feature and so the docs still assume you’re not using Flakes…

I was also working on a very simple Rust script, and couldn’t get it to properly build due to some problem with the OpenSSL library that one of the dependent crates of my project used.

That was my experience with NixOS after a couple of months. The concept of Nix[OS] is fantastic, but it comes with a heavy cost depending on what you’re wanting to do. The community is also great, but even I saw someone who heavily contributes to Nixpkgs mention that a big issue is only a handful of people know how Nixpkgs is properly organized, and that they run behind on PRs / code reviews of Nixpkgs because of it.

I’d still like to try NixOS on say, a server where I could expect it to work better because everything is declarative such as docker containers - but it’s going to be a while before I try it on my PC again.

DangerousInternet, 1 year ago

deleted_by_author

agressivelyPassive, 1 year ago

Nix would need some proper GUI for that. It’s very “shove into cold water”, which isn’t exactly the best experience.

velox_vulnus, 1 year ago

You might want to look into SnowFlake OS, which is supposed to be an easier NixOS.

Guenther_Amanita, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Neither of both.

Both are more on the tinkerer-side, and for university you need something reliable and easy to use in my eyes.

And that might be Fedora Silverblue/ Atomic (or universal-blue.org to be more precise for QOL-tweaks).
It is definitely more simple, stable (release cycle) and also more reliable, since there’s only one base (Fedora packages + your DE), and therefore less configuration variability.

I’d also lose access to the AUR

No, you wouldn’t. Neither on Nix, nor on Fedora Atomic. Especially on Silverblue you layer and containerise a lot, and you can always use the pre-installed and self updating Distrobox to install Arch and use the AUR. That’s also what I do, and it works fine, even though I almost never feel the urge to use it.

lily33, 1 year ago

Actually, both Arch and NixOS are pretty reliable, and won’t just break out of nowhere, leaving your computer unusable.

hglman, 1 year ago

Sure, but when you need to add something new, it will be a lot of effort.

kpw, 1 year ago

I honestly don't know what you mean by that. I use Arch btw.

sickday, 1 year ago

It would be the exact same amount of effort you'd use to get new software on other distros. Both Arch and NixOS have very straightforward methods of installing new software that aren't any more difficult than doing so on Debian or some other distro. Both Arch and NixOS support independent package managers like flatpak and snap + they support Appimages.

I'd also add that OP doesn't even need to use NixOS to use nix packages, whereas Arch or Debian would require systems based on those distros. So if anything NixOS tries to make it very easy to add and configure software. Where does all the effort come in?

Guenther_Amanita, 1 year ago

Yeah, of course. You’re right.

Nix is kind-of-immutable, and you can always roll back to your old build if necessary.

But Arch on the other hand is notorious to “just break” if you don’t exactly know what you’re doing. Of course it will work perfectly reliable (apart from the few paper cuts you get when using bleeding edge stuff) if you are experienced, and optimally, if you set it up with BTRFS and Snapper/ Timeshift.

But honestly, unpopular opinion, I absolutely see no reason to use Arch today. The only exception is the DIY-aspect, which I totally understand and respect. But, for every other use case, there are better options out there, may it be Tumbleweed or Nix for a rolling release, Arch in Distrobox on Silverblue, whatever. It sounds like way too much effort for what I would get. But each to their own.

penquin, 1 year ago

It’s kinda sad that Arch has this “unstable” reputation, while it is very solid distro. I’ve been running it on my laptop for a long time and I honestly don’t even remember the last time it broke. Thing literally just works.

TCB13, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Neither, rock solid Debian + flatpak for the latest software.

CatLikeLemming, 1 year ago

I’ve already considered Debian, but… I dunno, this isn’t what I’d call the most logical reason, but I just kinda don’t like it as my desktop OS. I’d use Debian over basically anything else for a server, but as a desktop OS I don’t like the vibe.

Keep in mind, I started using Linux this summer and in a few years I’ll probably look back at this wondering why I was such an idiot, but I gotta fall and get a bloody nose first to notice ;3

TCB13, 1 year ago

I’ve already considered Debian, but… I dunno, this isn’t what I’d call the most logical reason, but I just kinda don’t like it as my desktop OS. I’d use Debian over basically anything else for a server, but as a desktop OS I don’t like the vibe.

I was on the same boat as you are, flatpak essentially made it all perfect.

KISSmyOS, 1 year ago

For me, the issue with Debian stable currently isn’t the applications, but the DE. Wayland support and UX gets better with every update of Gnome/KDE, and that isn’t something you can install via flatpak.

TCB13, 1 year ago

Fair enough.

BaroqueInMind, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Once I found out about Paru, I decided I would no longer need another OS outside of everything Arch provides. Also, Valve decided to switch SteamOS to Arch, so I'm sticking with it once they release it.

penquin, 1 year ago

My honest opinion? Neither. Just go with something that works out of the box like Linux mint until you’re done with school then you’ll have time to mess with your system. That’s what I did for a friend of mine when he went to college. Gave him a laptop with mint on it and never heard a single complaint from him. It has everything he needs. Focus on school now and worry about distros later.

markstos, 1 year ago

School is a time to learn and both Arch and NixOS provide plenty of opportunities for that.

penquin, 1 year ago

While true, but they also need a system that they don’t need to mess with so they can focus on their school. Unless they’re going into w degree that utilizes Linux then I guess it makes more sense.

Trainguyrom, 1 year ago

I have to agree, if you’re late or have assignments that don’t work correctly because of your special Arch/Nix install, you’re going to be in for a very rough time. College is when you need to focus on learning exactly what is prescribed by the professors and instructors. Anything else you learn is secondary, and your free time is best spent on extracurriculars and trying to make friends because thats the stuff that’s really hard to do after college. Y’know what’s not hard to do after college? Scavenge a junk computer for next to nothing and install NixOS and Arch on it

penquin, 1 year ago

I guess I’m not crazy after all for looking out for OP. I am getting downvoted for it. 😁

noddy, 1 year ago

I don’t know about everyone else, but I had a lot more spare time to tinker with linux when I was a student than after, having a full time job. But I guess if you only have the one computer and need it to work, then tinker in a VM or something. Don’t wait with tinkering and learning about linux if it is interresting to you and something you want to spend time on. You might not have the time for it in a few years.

Astaroth, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Disclaimer: I only tried NixOS for less than a month when I was a complete Linux noob, I have since then been daily driving Arch Linux for about 2 years now.

---

For me, at least on the surface level, NixOS just felt like Arch Linux, with more similarities than differences.

What was nice about NixOS was the single config file for everything, although iirc I had to reboot every time for it to be applied while with Arch you can just install something and run it immediately.

Edit: I either remembered it wrong or I was doing it wrong because you don’t have to reboot the whole system according to the reply from hallettj.

What I didn’t like however was all the packages that got installed (through the list in the config file) had really strange directories which I couldn’t find easily.

like on Arch the packages and the executables are basically all at /usr/lib/ and /usr/bin/ and iirc it was pretty much the same on NixOS, except on Arch I’ll have usr/lib/firefox but on nix it would be usr/lib/u123uadqasd782341kasjhiu3sh932s9sdasdsapzxcqw-firefox

Another thing is that it works great for everything you install through the Nix config file, but it’s not necessarily going to clean up any files created by programs that got installed through it when you remove the packages from the config file.

Like say you have installed steam and then you install some game through steam, well that game wasn’t added through the config file so there’s no guarantee that if you decide to remove steam that you will also remove whatever the programs steam installed or if they created some new files somewhere.

Of course the same thing already happens on other OSes as well, so you could say that it’s an upside that Nix is better at cleaning up after itself whenever you remove something, but also because it’s supposed to all be controlled through a single config it just feels that much worse when you have to hunt down some file somewhere.

---

Again these are mostly my anecdotes from 2 years ago when I was a complete noob. Maybe I wouldn’t have any issues if I tried it today. And chances are I was just trying to do something you shouldn’t even be doing.

Plus at the start I used KDE Plasma 5 on Nix and Arch, maybe it will go better if I use i3wm on NixOS like I’ve been doing for a year and half or so on Arch now.

At least I’m pretty sure that having daily driven Arch for 2 years now I would have much better chances with NixOS now than when I tried it with 0 experience on Linux.

So since you’ve already got the experience from using EndeavorOS you might not have any big problems using NixOS, or at least learn how it works pretty fast.

hallettj, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

I want to make a small correction - this is not true:

iirc I had to reboot every time for it to be applied while with Arch you can just install something and run it immediately.

nixos-rebuild behaves like most package managers: it makes new packages available immediately, and restarts relevant systemd services. Like other distros you have to reboot to run a new kernel.

And cleaning up Steam games is as issue with most distros too. But I kinda see your point.

Btw Nix (both NixOS and the Nix package manager running in other distros) has this feature where you can run packages without “installing” them if you just want to run them once:

<span style="color:#323232;">$ nix shell nixpkgs#package-name
</span>

That puts you in a shell with one or more packages temporarily installed. The packages are downloaded to /nix/store/ as usual, but will get garbage-collected sometime after you close the shell.

Astaroth, 1 year ago

Thank you for the correction. It was 2 years ago + I was really inexperienced so I could be misremembering things and/or just have been doing things incorrectly

markstos, 1 year ago

I recommend first trying the Nix package manager on Arch to see how you like it. You can use it to install some things in your home directory without interfering with the Arch package manager.

dinckelman, 1 year ago

I’ve been using Arch for almost 8 years, and I enjoy basically everything about it. Since Nix has been so popular lately, I thought I’d take a look at it too. I like what it does, but the documentation is really poor, and the learning curve is insanely steep. When flakes and nix-command become stable, I’ll be giving it another shot

cashews_best_nut, 1 year ago

I too am something of an Arch user

Btw

utopiah, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Going to sound like a boring pleb but… if your OS takes less than 1h to install and setup (which is my experience with Debian/Ubuntu on a SSD with a fiber connection, or even on a RPi with a modern microSD on an ADSL connection over WiFi) then it doesn’t matter much what you use. You grab a mug of coffee, click here or there from time to time and if your /home partition is saved you are good to go faster than most people even respond to an email.

utopiah, 1 year ago

I should add if you want to tinker “shallowly” containers are amazing. If you need to tinker deep, using a VM proper or even another physical machine (with a KVM or another keyboard and monitor) while your main machine remains untouched, it should NOT affect your uptime.

Trainguyrom, 1 year ago

I think the funniest part of this is I was recently preparing some laptops for work with Windows 10 and it literally took 6 hours thanks to slow updates, one laptop corrupting the keyboard and touchpad driver so completely it required a full reinstall (on a fresh install mind you) and other impressively terrible snags. Granted it would’ve been more like 1-2 hours if I started with an install image that wasn’t about 2 years old, but it was still impressive how much of a time sink it was

KISSmyOS, 1 year ago

“Stability” is probably the most mis-used word in the Linux world.
It means that how your system looks and behaves doesn’t change, which is really important for servers, especially in business, where you want to plan any change in advance before you commit to it.
Arch is not stable in this sense. It constantly changes, and those changes can come up on short notice with any upgrade.

But when people read that Arch isn’t stable, they think the system can break at any time.
I’d say this hasn’t been the case for at least 10 years now. If you RTFN (read the fucking news) and use the AUR sensibly, Arch has become a really boring system, regarding breakage.

hottari, 1 year ago

Arch breaks all the time. It has to because upstream is usually always changing so breakage is inevitable.

Though a person’s mileage on this may vary (less update frequency, less no of programs etc.), the constant thing about rolling release is that breakages within software releases are to be expected.

LeFantome, 1 year ago

My experience with Arch is that it has been very solid and stable. It is just “makes sense” for the most part and so issues are very resolvable.

If you use the AUR, you can get times when packages need to be excluded ( held back ) in order for the overall system to update. I do not see that as an Arch problem and it is easy to handle.

One thing that is an Arch problem is that, if you do not update often enough, you can end-up with outdated keys that prevent you from installing before packages. The solution is just to update the keyring before updating everything else but this is confusing for a new user and kind of dumb in my opinion. I feel like the system should do this for me.

Ironically, I find Arch is most stable if you update very frequently ( which makes the updates smaller and more incremental ). I do a quick update almost every day without any fear of breaking my system. Any “problems” I have had with Arch updates are trying to update a system that has not been updated forever. Even then, it is just a bit more work.

Another thing that can happen if you leave it too long is that packages will have been replaced by newer ones. Keeping up to date means there are only going to be a small number of those. An update after a year can run into a surprising number of them.

I dug out an old laptop that had Arch on it from 3 years before. Updating it was annoying but in the end it was totally up to date and stable.

hottari, 1 year ago

Arch is not stable but it’s easy to fix issues arising from its rolling release nature. One of the ways being utilizing the AUR packagedowngradefor easy package version rollbacks. I should also note that the most common reason for Arch breaking is rarely ever because of the distro itself but because upstream has introduced breaking changes. You can see this when an upstream feature breaks in Arch, then Fedora picks up the same bug a few weeks/month later.

Arch is however the most solid distro I’ve ever used since I began using Linux many many moons ago.

One thing that is an Arch problem is that, if you do not update often enough, you can end-up with outdated keys that prevent you from installing before packages. The solution is just to update the keyring before updating everything else but this is confusing for a new user and kind of dumb in my opinion. I feel like the system should do this for me.

Arch already does this. Could be that your install has the keyring refresh service disabled but I’ve had it enabled for a good while now and I’ve never encountered that outdated pacman keyring issue.

KISSmyOS, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Arch breaks all the time.

Is that your recent personal experience?

hottari, 1 year ago

No. Not a recent opinion. I’ve used Arch for more than 3 years now.

fxdave, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

Ofc, Arch users should learn how to resolve a package conflict, or how to downgrade packages, or generally how to debug the system. Sometimes you also have to migrate config files.

On the other hand, as an arch user, I can tell that it mostly just works. If you customize heavily an ubuntu, it will break more likely. And while you can fix an arch, you probably have to reinstall an ubuntu.

Moreover, Arch has a testing repository which is not the default.

Unmapped, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

The downside of NixOS is bad documentation. Which makes it take quite a while to get your config setup the way you want. Its so worth it though. I used arch for 5+ years and have been on NixOS for about 6 weeks now. I’m definitely never going back. My conifg is done, I barely have to change anything now. Its all saved in a git repo so I never have to make it again. I’ve already switched all of my machines over. And even a few of my friends. Which has been super easy to do cause I just give them my config then remove everything they don’t need. I’ve only been using it for a little while but it feels so reliable and Unbreakable even though I’m running unstable packages. Because if anything breaks you just go back to the last generation that worked. Which made me willing to just try anything when I was setting it up.

Also you could run Nix package manager on arch for this, but the nix package repo is amazing. It has everything i’ve needed or even thought about installing. And in my opinion its way better than using AUR packages. Most of the time you just DL them and don’t have to build them. Its just so much faster and more reliable then using Paru or Yay. Plus there is a NUR( nix user repo) but tbh I’ve never even looked at it.

The other con I know of is issues running binaries and app images. But there are was work arounds for them. I use a few app-images by just running ‘appimage-run <appimage filename>’. And so far its worked perfectly. As for a binaries you can use steam-run or I think using distrobox would work. But I haven’t had to do anything like that yet.

I found this YouTube channel quite useful when I was setting mine up. Vimjoyer

agressivelyPassive, 1 year ago

I found it fairly difficult to set up nixos on one of my machines, because it simply didn’t ship with a certain, relatively common kernel module/user space app. I also couldn’t find a usable workaround (only compiling my own kernel on every update, which is not exactly my kind of fun).

So, you might want to try that out first.

OmnipotentEntity, 1 year ago

Out of curiosity, which one?

noli, 1 year ago

nixos.wiki/wiki/Linux_kernel

You can specify custom parts of the config that enables that module and/or extra module packages.

If you specify a custom part of the config then ye sure you’ll be compiling the kernel on each kernel update but you don’t need to manually configure it

Presi300, 1 year ago

NixOS and nix in general is incredibly complicated imo and the documentation is… let’s just say sub par. I’d go with arch unless you really just wanna learn nix.

noli, 1 year ago

It’s incredibly complicated in the same way that ubuntu is incredibly complicated to a lifelong windows user.

It just requires a bit of a paradigm shift which includes a learning curve but IMO once you’re past that point it’s intuitive and even easier than other distros.

Presi300, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

You cannot compare NixOS to ubuntu… even for as a new user to more adept user comparison, NixOS is really complicated. I’m not saying it’s bad, just that the documentation on how it works could be better. I’ve tried to use NixOS and nix itself multiple times and they were a nightmare to setup each time, especially NixOS (nix itself isn’t as complicated to me but it has some annoying things with proprietary software and not integrating with desktops at all without using hacky scripts).

noli, 1 year ago

Did you truly read what I said? The only logical way I can frame your comment is that you glanced at what I wrote down and started writing a reply.

To a regular average windows user, ubuntu is incredibly complicated. When you learm how it works and how you’re supposed to use it, it becomes incredibly easy. The “hard” part of ubuntu is the paradigm shift from windows to the linux ecosystem.

Similarly, to an average linux user nixos is “hard” because it does things completely differently from other linux distros. But once you’re used to it, it just makes sense and is easy.

So the comparison is average windows user -> ubuntu vs average linux user -> nixos. Not average user -> ubuntu vs average user -> nixos.

Finally: Nixos documentation is IMO 100x better than ubuntu documentation. Whenever I experience any issue with ubuntu it’s easier to just load up the arch wiki and hope it’s similar than it is to try and find anything specific for ubuntu that isn’t either 10 years out of date, a massive gaping security risk or just plain dumb. The nixos wiki may not be perfect but it has always been sufficient for my needs, and I have to run a decent amount of very niche pieces of software.