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NixOS: Everything Everywhere All At Once
🕑 Added 2024-02-17 12:11:11 +0000 UTCStory time:
One day, as happens now and then with a bleeding-edge rolling release distro, a systemd update reversed my mouse buttons.
It only affected my exact mouse driver, which had a bug in it.
The great thing about rolling release and cutting edge distributions like Arch, is that you get to be a beta tester, whether you like it or not!
I thought this was the way it had to be on Linux: Stability or Cutting edge features, not both.
But that wasn't right at all, with NixOS you can have everything, everywhere all at once!
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I'm sorry there's been no video for a while folks, I have a good reason: The video on Autism has been WAY HARDER to write than I had anticipated.
I've written a REALLY high-quality script, but it's not good enough yet.
ADHD is simple compared to Autism, every book I read makes me rewrite the script!
I'm nearly there, but it won't be this month's video. I have put it on the back burner, and produced a simpler video this month instead:
Anyone who's seen my discord activity in #linux over the last month might have been able to guess what was coming - finally, my NixOS video 😅
Hope you like it! Thank you all for your support, talk soon <3
Tris
Comments
No Boilerplate
steam worked out of the box in my initial nixos tests, I was so delighted (do note https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Steam for tweaks) If you have any problems, and have an nvidia card, I would do NO config, and sell the card and get an equivalent AMD card. No joke, your problems will all evaporate. Nvidia hate the linux community for some reason!
No Boilerplate
sorry for the delay, rsi is a wild ride. The Nix community are INSANE. Every PR seems to get merged, and there are 100 ways to do everything, ask 10 people what the 'right way' to do things and you'll get 20 answers. For a quite life: Just use configuration.nix like I showed (do watch the vimjoyer video too) and don't write any nix modules or anything like that - get back to enjoying your stable non-fussy system! :-D
No Boilerplate
I'm afraid I'm not going to be a nix-y youtuber! I don't care about reproducibility (as you can see from my global rust config https://gist.github.com/0atman/d25f895e45ed44d42e1340ddaf443d99 ) I just want a quiet life :-D
Zach
After learning that 99% of my favorite Steam games can run fine on Linux (and after hearing about Windows Recall...) I decided to give Linux a second try. I was going to go with basic stable Ubuntu, but the built-in config backup is just what I needed to see to feel safe living a bit more adventurously.
Nomm
So, after watching your video I'm working through the steep nixos learning curve being a novice linux user and non-programmer has made it somewhat tedious, but I've gotten by somehow. Mostly just looking for stability and some sort of order to managing my systems the all-in-one nixos system seemed great. I excitedly jumped in installed some packages with configuration.nix and then find out that's the "old" way to do it from forums and using flakes seems to be what the community has adopted. You described everything being configured in your configuration.nix and that resonated with me a lot. Hoping for some insight, am I just fundamentally misunderstanding? Thanks!
Jason
I have been using nix for a few months before this video it's great, I'd love if you did more nixos content, there is very little nixos content out there and your style of easy to follow information dense videos would be great for it.
Nils Loewen
This is the best I've found so far: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/rust-src-not-found-and-other-misadventures-of-developing-rust-on-nixos/11570
Nils Loewen
Great presentation, I'm sold and have installed NixOS on my dev machine... The only problem is rust is a bit finicky to work with. Could you post your setup to get rust development working smoothly?
No Boilerplate
I've booted from a live usb to fix arch for the last time, NixOS does everything arch does but better - I'm astonished! Give it a try! :-D
No Boilerplate
Nix works GREAT on the framework! Can you use two SSDs in your machine? That's a super safe way of dual booting you could try - if not, use a fast usb drive, just to test! :-)
No Boilerplate
Oh congrats! I'm so pleased for you, this is JUST what I hoped for when making the video :-D The hard part starts now, time to re-build bad habits!
No Boilerplate
great tip, I've added a todo to that slide, which I'll update before the public release, thank you! :-)
No Boilerplate
Fantastic, if you're stuck with the hardware, dual boot asahi - your compile times will be *faster* than native (somehow!? what is apple DOING!?)
Ahmed Haracic
What's your experience with asahi linux been, I'm really interested in hearing about that since I'm on an m1 pro mac right now. I don't want to switch to another machine since i periodically do ios development, but not all the time, and I'd really like to be able to run arch on the same machine.
Thech
Great video, I have used arch Linux for 15 years, I don't understand why you had to reinstalled just because your kernal update did not work, depending on your setup there is different ways to just downgrade packages and deal with them later.. In general if you have a deadline just don't update your system, Arch often gets shot at because an update can break your system, that is true, but often I think people just blindly update their system.. It is quite easy to look if the kernal is being update or gpu driver or the DE/WM if any of these are update and your system does not work as normal after, it should be fairly easy to figure out why.. Maybe it cannot be fixed but then just rollback that package
Ruaidhri Lumsden
The idea of using more than one computer, or dual booting, fills me with anxiety - so I've largely made peace with exclusively using Windows on my Framework laptop so that I can achieve full compatibility. I do kinda want to try Nix though. Dammit Tris, why do you have to go and make it sound so compelling!!
Erwan
Hey Tris, about ADHD: just got my ADD diagnostic a few weeks ago and started Concerta last week. Your coping mechanisms video was eye-opening and a big inspiration in my journey. I even referenced the video during my discussions with the neuropsychologist. Thank you again for putting your struggles into words.
Lewis Oaten
Nice, I'm sold. I'll give it a go. Big pitch for me is ease of switching machines and keeping a similar config. One tiny bit of feedback if you are still editing is the "Differentiated" slide is a little confusingly presented. If this is trying to be a feature comparison between major operating systems, then it may be more conventional to present it as a feature table?
