This is so true, and why I choose OpenSUSE
Tried that, but my autism didn’t like it.
The fact that YaST and the KDE settings had overlapping functionality, a GUI package manager frontend that shows you options you aren’t supposed to use in Tumbleweed, and it being the only modern distro that couldn’t install my printer-scanner-combo automatically drove me off.For me, I didn’t like patterns (or the work-arounds). A shame because it (or now, maybe slowroll) might be closer to what I’m looking for, especially if the talk of smoke-testing is true. (though I’ve also seen someone say that Zypper is slow)
I like some of what I’ve seen with NixOS, though I see quite a few things that make it seem like not the answer either. And some of the things (like distrobox) seem like they probably add weight to updating as well (and/or clunkiness, if I have to manually do it).
Also some of my issue is I’m still running a 1050Ti (and Arch putting the legacy drivers on the AUR, a bit of a pain for me… not sure if that has changed though), I know that’d likely be even worse on Nix as well.
EDIT: I’ve tried Flatpak for user apps as well, and needing to download graphics drivers again really defeats the purpose.
Ideally I’d like something that has an update system intended for slower internet. Something that can pull (/keep) slightly older dependencies when user-land stuff is a bit slow, or outright delay/reschedule possibly-broken (for any number of reasons) updates rather than wasting a user’s time and bandwidth. Guessing it doesn’t exist, though (or if it does, it has some other huge workflow flaw).
Mentioning @LostWanderer@fedia.io because they’ve talked about Tumbleweed and Nix.
I think Patterns are pretty rad (as you can customize what’s installed in the Graphical Installer and hit the ground running. It’s pretty easy to uninstall and make certain packages taboo. I think the one annoyance with them is that it tells you every time that it won’t install those taboo packages. Personally, I find zypper to be pretty zippy; there are times it can be slow if I am downloading huge things like games or updating my laptop at the same time.
I think an update system intended for slower internet would be a challenging thing to make happen. As you’d have a lot of additional moving parts that would need to be balanced in a precise way or that house of cards would collapse quickly. Making a system either unresponsive or worse, broken. I feel it would be a workflow nightmare of a scale that would beggar belief and it would need constant attention from the maintainers…Something we’d probably not see in our lifetimes.
I do agree with your Flatpak grievances, as that is a valid thing to be concerned about, especially since you have slow internet. I would love if Flatpaks could share a singular library of dependencies (based on the currently installed Flatpaks). This is why I am very careful to use a small amount of them as there are a few apps I can’t install through the package manager or RPMs. They are handy for this reason alone, but need a lot of refinement before being a better packaging solution.
I’d love the concept of permacomputing to become a bigger thing…As that would mean longer support windows for hardware and operating systems that are highly efficient with the utilization of system resources. Not requiring users to constantly chase the latest upgrades every 10 or so years. I would love that gap to grow towards 30 or 40, systems that outlive their users before you need to upgrade hardware. Operating Systems that don’t have super fucking flashy stuff added all the time, just sensible refinements that aren’t going to tax a user’s hardware. You’d have to opt in for the flashy stuff, but the ability to make a choice and not have it forced on you is such a wonderful idea. This is why I like Linux so much, there is a lot of choice that can fit a person’s use case!
Nix
I adore the idea of nix. I fucking hate the syntax with a passion.
oh use the
.packagesbut only for this else use a flake and if you want dot files there is this other completely different thing with home manager but if you want this extra config customization or a custom system script then you need to make a derrivatio…its so damn exhausting.
I just want a list of packages.
That I can put in modules.
And turn them on and off based on the computer I’m on.
And if they are on they should use these dots.
And not look like a spaghetti bowl made of curly braces sourced from json derulos left buttock.
And the system should also have some additional sbctl hooks because we still have not figured out that dracut generated initramfs files don’t get purged from the database so I have to have a custom hook to not get error messages every time I
paruahahahAAHAHA…anyway dcli exists and is a fine middle ground.
No
It’s there to solve your “This is boring” issue without having to do all of the system configuration stuff manually*.
I was able to package a nightly AppImage as if it were installed normally like an app, and I could reinstall the system if I wanted to, and it’d still be there. NixOS is the opposite of manual dependency resolution, it’s dependency heaven. You can have unstable and stable repositories side-by-side, living in a utopic egalitarian society. You can write a configuration file that does everything. You can do anything with NixOS. NixOS is the one true god, all hail NixOS—
Ah, I see why you may not want to use it. Consider it though, it’s genuinely good and trying doesn’t hurt.
I haven’t even told you about nix-comma or nix helper (nh) yet. May the, uh, flake be with you.
*You do have to write the config files, though you can just adapt someone else’s configuration.
