silent_water [she/her]

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: October 26th, 2021

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  • I think one of the issues with nixos learning materials is that they eschew talking about how to write your own packages. but to really understand anything, you have to get your head around writing and modifying packages. in nix, a package is just a build step that can do I/O during particular phases and produces an output to the nix store, so they’re an essential building block for anything that isn’t utterly trivial.

    the other major stumbling block is working out how modules (the things that let you write config for the system) can actually be composed. adding a new module to imports gives you new config params you can set so you can organize your system config in terms of modules and packages to make things work the way you like.

    Nix Pills are the canonical learning material for packages. I don’t know of any good learning material for modules - I learned by working on nixpkgs and another involved project that made extensive use of modules.

    lastly, nix config files are written in the nix language and it’s a bit idiosyncratic. it almost looks and feels like Haskell but it’s slightly different in important ways. there’s no way around learning it if you have multiple systems and want to share config between them.





  • when you say “something is not properly supported” what do you mean? like nvidia/amd haven’t released graphics drivers yet for linux? or some peripheral isn’t recognized?

    basically, by buying new hardware just after it launches, you’re effectively one of the very first people to boot that hardware with linux. you can usually make it work but most hardware manufacturers don’t work with the linux devs to make sure support is in place. so devs have to get ahold of the hardware retail and then fix whatever is broken. the exception to this is AMD and Intel - both companies have people working on linux so they will merge support for new hardware into the kernel before that new hardware is even announced to the public. so if you stick to cpus and video cards from those two manufacturers, you’ll make your linux life easier.

    even then, though, the support might exist in the latest version of the kernel, but the last Ubuntu or Mint release is still several versions behind. so you’re effectively forced to use a distro that releases updates much faster (ie rolling release), or be willing to make modifications to the system post-install to get it to work.

    tl;dr: you’ve got a constellation of requirements that can’t all be met at the same time. either give it 3 to 6 months after release of new hardware or be willing to learn how to make it work. expecting software to work with hardware it hasn’t yet been designed to work with is always going to be a recipe for failure.



  • it’s sunk cost bias. I have this trying to use windows or macos, after using linux exclusively for half my life - everything feels foreign and frustrating, with an obnoxious amount of UX patterns you’re expected to know in order to find anything. ugh, I could rant for hours on how obtuse macos is (mainly because I have to interact with it for work right now - if you force me to use windows, I’ll rant about that too)






  • is it possible? yeah, it’s linux, you can do whatever you want. but as a newcomer, I’d pick a distro + DE combo that you can install all at once as switching may not be the most straightforward process. when you want more control so you can set things up exactly the way you like them, there’s more DIY distros that make the process easier (because you don’t first have to remove the configuration that made the existing DE work the way it’s set up to work).