throwawayish @ throwawayish @lemmy.ml

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Why does Linux do that’s “better” than Windows? That’s not meant to inflame anyone. More so what do you personally like better.

Linux offers me freedom and control over my systems far beyond Windows (or any proprietary OS for that matter) does. This allows me to:

• Setup a system of which its parts have been deliberately chosen by yours truly to satisfy my particular needs and my needs only. And I can make it obey whatever I will. It won't do a thing I didn't require of it, nor will it overrule any of my configs at a later point in time.
• Not have any spyware injected by the OS. Thus offering actually good privacy by default (for a change).
• More 'modern' ways of maintaining a system are only properly supported on Linux. Fully declarative systems like NixOS/Guix have yet to show up for other OSes. Furthermore, while the likes of Android, iOS and macOS do have 'immutability' (at least) sprinkled to them. Windows has yet to show the capabilities of their CorePC. One might even argue that it's uncertain if it will come out in the near future as CoreOS (10X) didn't see the light of day either. Linux, on the other hand, offers a plethora of 'immutable' distros that should suit ones needs regardless.

What can I expect to find as a casual observer?

Perhaps not much of it honestly 😅. Sure, you should find a gratis system that just works and doesn't hoard your data. Updates go smoother, it'll have improved performance on older devices. And if you actually know what you're doing, then it'll have better performance on your newer devices as well. Installing software is just one command away by default. But some of the more advanced benefits might rely on a more profound understanding, which you may or may not be interested to indulge yourself with.

Thanks for answering!

Just to be clear; the 'metrics' on how popular Manjaro is compared to Arch and other Arch-based distros reveal to us that Manjaro has been going strong for quite some time. While the numbers of its adoption during its heyday were IMO completely justifiable. I think that -currently- it continues to stay more relevant than it otherwise would have any right of based on its merits. Which has been something that has caught my attention and made me curious to find out why that was the case.

Thus, if you had been a relatively newer user, then I would have loved to know what made you gravitate towards Manjaro in the first place. But, as you've been using it since before the controversies and archinstall, I think your reasons to start using Manjaro were completely legit and the continued use of Manjaro is at least justifiable.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not in the "Manjaro is blatantly bad"-camp, I just think that it attracts more newer users than is desirable.

Off-topic, but how long have you been using Manjaro? I am genuinely interested, btw*.

Notably openSUSE Tumbleweed is a distro that satisfies all requirements while not being named yet by others. Apart from it, only Arch and Fedora are worth mentioning as distros that also satisfy all requirements (as some others have already noted).

Thank you so much! Much appreciated!

Something that hasn't quite been touched upon but might be important to note is that both Zorin and Linux Mint run 'old' kernels (almost two years old in fact). While this does not necessarily have to affect you, there's a considerable chance that you might not reap the benefit from improved performance and other good stuff that would be found on a newer kernel.

Generally speaking, you should be fine regardless. However, if you intend to primarily engage in high-fidelity gaming, then I'd argue it's at least worth benchmarking your performances on Zorin and/or Linux Mint and compare that to a Fedora(-based distro; like Bazzite or Nobara) or an openSUSE Tumbleweed (or perhaps even an Arch(-based distro) if you're feeling brave). If the differences are negligible, then you shouldn't let this be a factor to take into consideration. But if it isn't, then you might want to (at least) consider switching over to a distro with a newer kernel (eventually).

Finally, the 'old' kernel is -in a sense- one of the reasons why both Zorin and Linux Mint are even popularized for newer users. But, that's something I won't be able to go over in this comment for the sake of brevity.

So they've had a major release last year in December. And their official website seems to be up. Though, I only had luck connecting to it through Tor 😅. It's still active according to Distrowatch. And, honestly, the reader reviews ain't that bad. I'd say give it a spin and consider reporting back on us 🙂.

Thanks for enlightening us! Fortunately, the answer in my original comment should still satisfy your needs.

On the software-side of things; Kodi is cool. As for remote control, consider referring to Kodi's Wiki-page on the matter for options.

Btw, honestly your query is way too vague. If possible, please provide us with more info so that we can better help you 😉.

About Ansible, it’s not declarative in the same way Nix is. The way it actually works is it executes little Python programs based on your config. But if you stick to the high level modules, it has a declarative feel.

Would it be correct to compare this to how declarative post-installation scripts written in bash feel like? Or is it really declarative, but just not to the level of Nix?

Btw, I just want to thank you for the heads-up 🙂 !

I use it to orchestrate Docker containers for my infrastructure and then some.

Very interesting. I will definitely look into this! Much appreciated!

Are you managing dotfiles in rootless containers?

There's not a lot to it, but I like to have my stuff related to .zshrc and .vimrc around regardless of what environment I'm in.

IMO you shouldn’t install nix in a container. If you want to customize your container, run nix outside of the container and tell home manager to apply itself to the container’s file system (home-manager build will put the result into a result directory, which you can copy). Or, you could just mount your host ~/.config on the container maybe.

Very informative! Much appreciated!

Ansible is a big project, but at the end of the day it’s just a Python package. If you already have Python installed, it’s not really adding that much.

Perhaps I should look more into this. Thanks for enlightening me on this matter!

Also obligatory advice for anyone new to Nix: use flakes. Flakes are good and right. It sucks that Nix is in a confusing transition process to flakes, but if you just adopt them completely from the start it makes everything easier. Your home manager config can live in a single flake somewhere that you find convenient, and you can apply it from there.

Noted.

This has definitely opened up both Home Manager and Ansible as potential solutions. Perhaps somewhat random, but have you by any chance engaged with Guix' guix home?

Thanks a lot for your input; much appreciated!

Let me know if you have other questions.

• Is it possible to use Nix' Home Manager to manage dotfiles within a container in such a way that changes applied to said dotfiles within the container would be 'synced' with all the other configs for existing (and future) containers?
• Is it possible to continue to have said functionality if the host doesn't have Nix' Home Manager setup/installed? (So, like, can Nix and its Home Manager be installed within a (rootless) container?)
• Are you by any chance knowledgeable on how Guix' guix home relates to Nix` Home Manager and how either of the two might be more suitable in this situation and why?

Aight. Thanks, regardless 🙂 !

A big downside is that you will have to install the basic nix package manager to get home manager working. You don’t have to use it to install all of your software, but it will still need a /nix and a system daemon for home manager as far as I know.

It's part of the package-deal I'm willing to commit to as long as the solution suffices 🙂 .

nix doesn’t play well with container environments

I’m not sure what this means.

Perhaps I should have been more precise, but I (seemed to) recall that Nix and/or Nix' Home Manager were not installable on rootless containers. Though, I failed at finding sources on this. So it might be outdated or just blatantly false (and thus a brain fart). Thus, I'll edit the OP to reflect this. Thank you for bringing this to my attention!

What specific things are you trying to do with containers and nix?

The final solution should also be applicable in containers. Thus I thought that Nix and Nix' Home Manager therefore required to be installed/setup within the container environments as well. I might be wrong to assume this, though*.

If you don’t want to install a bug big (I suppose), complicated piece of software just to manage dotfiles, maybe you could consider Ansible? I know some sysadmin types who keep their local machine configs in Ansible. It has some nice bonus features, like deployment over ssh (nix can do this too btw).

Did I understand you correctly in that you posit that Ansible is more compact, less intrusive and less complicated than Nix' Home Manager? I'm not comfortable talking about Ansible, but it seemed to me like a grand tool for complete system management (at least for on new installation). Which, honestly, is pretty cool, but seemed to be overkill for what I tried to achieve here. Though, I'd love to be wrong on this. Furthermore, is Ansible container-friendly ?

While great as a last resort, to me this seems overkill. Though, I would love to be wrong on this. Is it even container-friendly?

This seems interesting. I didn't make the link to 'immutable'/read-only with templates. But I'll read up on it and explore the possibilities. Thank you!

I've already mentioned chezmoi in my original post. In which I further alluded that it doesn't quite satisfy my needs unless it (somehow) allows the dotfiles to be managed declaratively and 'immutable'/read-only. Do you happen to know if one is able to achieve that and (more importantly) how?

Surely dotfiles are meant to change over time?

Indeed. But any and all changes should await my 'permission' of sorts before being committed declaratively (or related) if at all. This might indeed make it hard(er) for software to create and change dotfiles as they will, which is somewhat the intended purpose.

Glad to hear that I was able to contribute 🙂 ! And thank you for your great reply!

I prefer KDE over gnome (I think that’s what’s bothering me about my install of popos at the moment)

That could definitely be it. No worries, even the community is somewhat polarized on GNOME; with a big chunk of the community favoring it over all the other desktop environments, while another big chunk doesn't tolerate it at all. However, the reason that everyone has an outspoken opinion on it comes primarily from the fact that a lot of distros come with GNOME by default; with both Ubuntu and Fedora being the big ones (sure; both have flavors/spins with other desktop environments, but their main ISO defaults to GNOME). Regarding recommendations; while any major (independent) distro should technically suffice, I would argue that Kubuntu and openSUSE (contrary to the others; openSUSE actually defaults to KDE) are both excellent choices, with both Fedora's KDE Spin and Debian (on which you can pick KDE during first install) are very good choices as well if you lean more towards minimalism. While Arch deserves a mention regardless, I don't think you're ready (yet).

Typing command line doesn’t bother me (on the opposite: I feel like I understand what is going on better if I can actually type in commands)

That's great to hear!

but I don’t fully understand the difference and advantages/disadvantages between pacman, apt, yum, etc. I’m more used to apt and I feel like there’s more information available, but that’s it.

I won't be able to be exhaustive on this, so I instead I'll lean more towards being somewhat oversimplistic for the sake of brevity.

• pacman is the package manager on Arch(-based distros)
• apt is the package manager on Debian(-based distros)
• yum used to be the package manager on Fedora(-based distros), but has since been replaced by dnf. You can still install packages using yum on these distros, however it's just an alias for dnf.

These are not the only package managers out there, as almost all independent distros come with their own package manager; apk (on Alpine), eopkg (on Solus), xbps (on Void) and zypper (on openSUSE) etc. The tasks of the package manager are varied, but all of them are to be interacted with when installing, upgrading and removing software. As the feature-set is different, so too are their performances. A rolling release distro like Arch will receive a constant stream of updates, thus having access to a package manager that's very fast is beneficial. Thus we find that pacman is very optimized for speed. To perhaps illustrate how much difference this can make, I compared Alpine's apk with openSUSE's zypper. Note that Alpine is one of the most minimalist distros out there, and its apk might be the fastest package manager that's in active use. So here are the results:

• sudo apk add firefox 0.01s user 0.02s system 0% cpu 8.216 total
• sudo zypper install -y firefox 0.02s user 0.06s system 0% cpu 33.727 total

On which the number before total reveals how much time it took in seconds. These tests were done in distrobox containers btw*.

Speed is not the only important metric, however as ultimately one can not engage with packages without waiting for them to be installed/updated/removed, a lot of the discourse is about how fast the package managers are at installing, updating and removing packages.