You must log in or register to comment.
@Natanox Seems like NixOS replaced Arch as both a local extremist cult and the most effective newbie repellent.
What’s funny to me here is that, as a long time Arch user, I have been considering switching to NixOS. One of the most terrifying thoughts to me is that after using the same Arch install for 2 years I will spend ages trying to recreate it if I ever have to. Oh, that and Nix letting you test packages seems like a cool feature.
I’ve been on arch around a year now and also considered the jump to NixOS. I was actually dual booting it with arch for awhile and I found pretty quickly that the shit documentation was a huge turn off for me. I ended up nuking the nix partition and reclaiming it for arch.
This is my biggest issue. I am utterly spoiled to the exquisiteness that is Arch’s Wiki…
Arch wiki is the documentation gold standard
I mean the Arch wiki mostly works on NixOS too. The problem with NixOS documentation is that there aren’t many examples for the Nix language itself.
I’ve found that the Arch wiki works for most distros if you know how to translate it. There have been multiple times I’ve searched how to do something or how to fix something in Linux and the only useful result is an arch forum or wiki. All I had to do is translate the steps for debian/ubuntu/opensuse/fedora/rpiOS, etc.
The process was usually “search this error” > “this part” isn’t working, search “this part error” > arch forum showing steps to fix. Search “where the fuck is this file in <distro>”. Get “it’s usually here, here, or over here”, then do arch steps.
Then there’s opensuse, and there’s fucking camelcase capitals in their packages (NetworkManager? Seriously?) so I have to Google “opensuse <command/application> package” like a fucking rube.
What is the Nix language like?
If Haskell and json had a baby
Hmm, that sounds more like dhall
That and the need to learn a bespoke, weird programming language that will only ever be useful for this one thing have really turned me off of that distro.
Definitely. Why not use something off the shelf! That by itself would make it much more approachable
I am about to switch away from arch that I installed 5 years ago. It’s a daunting thought isn’t it?
The nice thing is that NixOS will keep your setup and all your tweaks if you ever need to reinstall. It’s designed to solve that exact problem.
One way of switching over would be to carry over your homedir and just starting with migrating packages and config as a first step.
Nix OS is so much pain
Use Ansible or something else
Throw Mint Cinnamon or the latest version on the computer, solved. Ubuntu can… be speshy sometimes on my older spare laptop, but it is not really their fault, more my computer is a bit cooked. Some puppy linux distros are cool, but also a tiny bit complicated for beginners.
That was the reason I decided to install Mint Cinnamon.
It’s been impossible to install for a week now. And I’m not even 100% IT illiterate. After ~3 days of struggling, I decided to do the walk of shame and post on the Mint forum, admitting my failure. It’s been unsolved for about a week now. >100 fails and errors, crashes, freezes.
I can’t even imagine where I would (not) be had I chosen Kali or Arch.
Tbh you might have failing RAM or something. Have you run Memtest?
Yes, I have done a few things already, including memtest. I’ll copy from the forum:
The things I have tried:
- Updating my BIOS.
- The ISO I downloaded has been md5 checked, all fine. I have also tried 2 other ISO files from 2 other mirrors - same.
- Three (3) USB drives to install Mint, ranging from 8 GB to 24GB.
- Installing with or without multimedia codecs.
- Turning on secure boot before install (I was desperate, found a forum post with a similar error message, later I found out that it was for a different reason).
- Turning off secure boot before install (I found a different forum post where the exact opposite was recommended - later I found out that it was for a different reason).
- Installing in compatibility mode.
- Offering a sacrifice to Xebeth’Qlu, tormentor of souls.
- Running gparted before install, deleting the previously half-installed partition, formatting it myself to ext4, then running the installer.
- Splitting the aforementioned partition into a 16GB swap partition (I have 16GB RAM) and leaving the rest of it as ext4 (mounted at “/”).
- Running chkdsk -f on the SSD containing the MBR+Win10, then rebooting the PC twice, according to one of the error messages in my post below (then trying to install again).
NixOS consist of a bunch of options that you define using the nix programming language. Since it’s a programming language, everything is well defined and organised into single place.
Technically, someone could build a GUI configuration editor with sane defaults and clearly organised pages of settings, which generates a configuration for you. This could immediately change NixOS from the most tedious to a relatively easy to use distro.
They already built a GUI editor, but a programmer made it so it is actually harder to use than the text file
Lmao which is it?
There’s a list of GUI editors here.
But I don’t know which one exactly they were talking about
And windows users are well known for their mastery of esoteric programming languages. Such as… um… ah… batch files, which, well, some of them can write. If they’re not more than four or five lines.
But that counts, right?Batch files¹, powershell, visual basic if you use Office, Lisp if you used AutoCAD back when macros were written in Lisp… 🤷♂️
¹- And, frankly, I doubt setting up NixOS is particularly more complex than setting up an autoexec.bat boot menu back when some programs (well, games are programs) wanted extended memory and some others wanted expanded memory (couldn’t have both modes at the same time, of course), and you had to make sure the drivers loaded in the most optimal order (which could vary depending on the aforementioned memory expanders, and which drivers the specific game actually needed) to fit as many as possible of them and DOS in high memory leaving as much as possible of the 640KB of system RAM free for the program… and I’m not even getting into the whole IRQ thing for soundcards and whatnot… and we had to do it all without Internet, learning by trial and error, or word of mouth, or from magazines…
Give them n00bs tinycore
Imo a just works, deb based kde distro with nvidia drivers, flatpaks and no snaps is what we need to bring forth the year of the linux desktop.
And one that you can get pre-installed on devices you can purchase. The “just buy and be happy” aspect is important for a lot of people as well, not to mention the valuable customer support. People with dispensable income who wish for this are usually furthest away from hackerspace culture though, so a lot of Linux enthusiasts seemingly overlook it. Or, when it comes to far-left people around, want to overlook it.
If I remember correctly TuxedoOS checks all those boxes. And I think if you want “same but Gnome” that would be SlimbookOS. 🤔
Nice astroturfing attempt
I’ve genuinely never seen a single person recommend NixOS to a new user, unless they already had advanced technical knowledge
Are you new around here?
You could just look at my profile to see that I’m not. I’m also not new to Linux communities in general. Doesn’t change that I’ve never seen someone recommend NixOS to a complete beginner. I have (rarely) seen Arch recommended, but those recommendations will generally be downvoted and have many replies disagreeing. Linux Mint is by far the distro I see most often recommended, followed by Fedora.
What I see recommended nowadays is indeed mint, various Ubuntu variations, arch (always, although a lot of the time in jest), Nix fairly regularly, and as for the classics: SuSE and Fedora, they’re rarely mentioned.
errupts
\sigh
I am daily driving nixos. It is for those users who have already used atleast couple of beginner distros. Get familiar with packages terminal and other. It is just arch but stable even at the unstable branch. It has saved from breakdowns during important work. But nixos needs time to mature it’s flakes and home manager.
Oh I actually need a recommendation… I have a tiny 7 inch LCD monitor. If I hook it up to my iPad the colors are fine but when I run it from the mini Linux computer I have the colors are all washed out and have weird dithering.
I know it’s a driver issue and I haven’t been able to find one that works. I also tried different distros. I tried mint, ubuntu and I think one other one that I can’t remember. All had the same issue.
Do any of you have ideas? How can I fix it
I swear, I’ve only recommended it to one newbie, and they were an engineer! I had a reason!
Hilarious that this is the new norm, though. NixOS is so not typical at all. Arch is more normal at this point.
Big nix fan here, I love being able to define my system from a couple configuration files and not scrounging around the file system for the right dot file
And also it let’s you do crazy things that would be impossible in other imperative distros tho.
I am thinking about root-on-tmpfs, conditional configuration and doing all sorts of crazy things with packages while remaining manageable.
It is simply another whole tier.
Definitely solves more problems than it creates! /s
I mean isn’t it accepted that NixOS is a terrible pick for a beginner, especially a non-technical one? I feel like even the Nix community doesn’t recommend the distro to complete beginners.
I use Nixos BTW.
And I can’t recommend it to anyone. Not even veterans.
I can only say if you like souls like games nixos might be your thing…
Lol I’ve been considering trying it and that might push me per the edge. The self hate is strong xD
If you do, this website is very helpful: https://search.nixos.org/options
Doubt, highly doubt it.
I use nixos btw
Complete with home manager, flakes, build server and automated deployments, the whole lot on machines from compute stick, gaming rig, hell even a surface. I have never had more free time than compared to arch. updates & config drift are no longer anything I worry about. Save so much time on rebuilds & customisations.
Nixos users never recommend it for new users. I always recommend mint or Ubuntu depending on the person and what they are used to. Seasoned Linux users i don’t even recommend it unless they have basic programming skills.
After that, bring it on, stick through the learning curve, you dont need the documentation. I only needed it at the start for a short period until it clicked and I figured it out. the repo and search has more than enough. In the repo you will find community builds and configs for a wide variety of hardware.
I wish. People recommend Arch to beginners all the time. And then wonder why there’s so many “Linux is too hard” comments everywhere
Arch isn’t necessarily hard. It just is unstable plus it encourages dated ways of doing things.
Those make it hard
And it just seems towering overall with the insane egos of some Arch users on forums. It’s a good distro, just setting it up feels so tiring.
Its weird because Gentoo is actually more involved but the community seems to have none of the ego issues.
I really wish everyone thought like that, but I still see people recommending Nix, Arch, Void… and some go the ideological route and start recommending systemd-less only like Artix or ranting against anything that uses Flatpak. Those discussions can get messy, and they always alienate the person who asked. Unfortunately those with ideological reasons are always the loudest and present in basically every “Beginner’s Help” group.
I wouldn’t recommend vanilla Arch only because of the installation process. CachyOS that simplifies it is an extremely good pick for a person who already knows what a computer is, but wants to try a proper OS.
Arch mostly got it’s reputation in the early days. Today some things are a lot easier to do on Arch than on other distros, especially because AUR exists. Also, it built one of the best wikis over all that time.
For most people though yeah, Debian is rock solid, only went arch on my desktop for nvidia drivers (and HDR), archinstall really simplifies installing it.
Arch and Debian wikis are both amazing sources of information, highly recommend for any distro.
Weird way to spell EndeavorOS
Weird way to spell EndeavorOS
With the missing ‘U’? I know, right? But it’s not weird; it’s just American, so it rewrites its history.
EndeavorOS? Yay!
I use arch btw
