Normally I always forget why I still keep thinking about switching back to Windows. Today was a great reminder. Linux can be frustrating. This post is somewhat about awareness and partly about me learning about other peoples experiences. I updated my CachyOS as usual. There were some system packages upgraded and I got the notification to reboot. Figuring I’d do it later I left after some time and the PC went to sleep. Upon returning the screen stayed black. Even upon forced reboot. Remembering I was using Limine with BTRFS snapshots I tried multiple previous snapshots but to no avail. I remember this happened before. So now I face another reinstall… This and having to dive into the deep end of terminal commands to get drivers, programs or games working can be quite frustrating. I understand why people are turned off and go back to Windows…
Onto NixOS for me. A big dive but it seems very stable which might be just what i need. I feel like the philosophy of NixOS combined with a graphical store to install programs and what not seems like a great solution.
What would your ultimate distro be like?
How long have you been using Linux, so on the one hand you still keep thinking about Windows. And on the other hand you already progressed to an Arch derivate, use BTRFS, snapshots, a non-standard bootloader and all that stuff?
I like NixOS. But it’s really for people with too much spare time to learn new programming languages, abstract concepts and weird quirks. It’s great. But sometimes you’ll also do a simple
nixos-rebuild switchand it’ll greet you with 4 pages of gibberish. Or you’ll spend 3h packaging some weird Python stuff, because you can’t just install and run it like on a regular distro 😅I’ve been on Linux for about 1-2 years now i think. Needed a reinstall a couple of times and did some distro hopping too.
NixOS seems to be a final destination for a lot of people and the premise of it seems really cool. I did try before but I was a bit put off by the programming style of installing. Like I kinda get it but having that automated by just installing from a store and having the programming stuff in the back would be so good for accessibility. How would I know how to program in a certain package or setting without internet?..
Use with mix of codex and claude code jt becoming just another level and much more easier to do things
Just don’t do it like me and think copy-pasting stuff from ChatGPT would do it. It’s not good at writing Nix configuration at all. And it doesn’t have a solid understanding either, of all the concepts in the background. Like not being able to execute binaries, what it takes to adapt something without the FHS, the intricacies of Python…
Ah great. Yeah, the entire premise of it is: you get to “program” your experience instead of clicking on some install buttons.
You can temporarily just install something in your shell:
nix-shell -p firefox-esrI guess the easiest way, and what all people do is just use https://search.nixos.org In doubt, use your phone 😅
You can also install “nix-search-cli” to search for packages. or “nix-option” to get info on options. However, I’m not sure how you’d end up in a situation without internet and wanting to change the configuration. I mean the moment you want to compile and install anything, it needs access to Github or wherever the code is stored. And if you don’t compile it yourself, it will pull it from the NixOS cache, which is also on the internet. So you can’t do anything. And the times we had a DVD to install software are long gone. So it’s probably down to some rare exception when you’re on the train or airplane, want to prepare something to apply later?! I don’t think there’s a good solution except the two CLI tools and maybe a local copy of the documentation / handbook.
And in my experience, the NixOS documentation isn’t great. It’s either there and straightforward. Or it’s a lot of searching stuff on the Wiki, forum… Using GitHub search with an appended: “language:nix” to see if someone already came up with a config. Or I’ll end up reading the code. That is for more advanced things, or niche stuff. It’s a bit similar to the overall experience of NixOS (in my opinion). Either things are super straightforward and mostly done for you to configure with 3 lines of code. Then there’s a fine line of stuff that’s moderately complex. And all the things not covered can get very complex and much more involved.