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Nix-GUI: Make NixOS usable for non-technical users through settings / GUI

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Re: Nix-GUI: Make NixOS usable for non-technical users through settings / GUI

#41

Post by gallexme »

depressedpanda wrote: post #36
lillecarl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Windows VM on a NixOS host for gaming, was really quite convenient to set it up, I set it up on a separate drive to be able to boot native too but I ended up never really doing it, so I will reconfigure my 2 drives as a Zraid and have windows on a Zvol instead. NVIDIA works great, but if I were to buy new hardware I'd go AMD (maybe Intel when the time comes)

> I have a Windows VM on a NixOS host for gaming, was really quite convenient to set it up, I set it up on a separate drive to be able to boot native too I've been planning on doing exactly this, but haven't had the time to figure out the best way of going about it. Is there a good guide/write up you'd recommend? (I already have a Windows 10 install on a separate SSD, but I rarely boot it because I can't stand the OS…

I use https://github.com/danielfullmer/nixos-nvidia-vgpu + https://looking-glass.io/ very successfully

Can theoretically game on Linux and windows at same time with just a single gpu (2080 ti), mainly use it cause I only have single gpu and I don't want to loose hardware acceleration on Linux, the nixos module both applies a the vgpu unlocker for consumer graphic cards (so u can split a gpu in multiple virtual gpus) https://github.com/DualCoder/vgpu_unlock

And merges it with the GeForce drivers so the host gpu does not stop having display output

And I just passthrough the vgpu and Xbox controllers to the vm with qemu and my main windows nvme disk (windows naturally just works inside and outside a vm for me, dual boot)

Re: Nix-GUI: Make NixOS usable for non-technical users through settings / GUI

#42

Post by tinco »

GordonS wrote: post #32

I've never used Nix, but it sounds interesting. I get the impression it's more used on desktop, but I'm curious if anyone has used it on servers?

I would say it's more convenient and useful for servers, but it could also be used for desktop. In theory it's the perfect server operating system, but in practice many sysadmins balk at having to learn the configuration language which has some design flaws that make it awkward and they stick with old fashioned stuff like Ansible.

Re: Nix-GUI: Make NixOS usable for non-technical users through settings / GUI

#43

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #14
dmitriid wrote: post #2

This will sound rude, but I'm more and more convinced that people immersed in nix have never seen a real person in real life. defined boolean expression reference true. wat. I'm a technical person, and I have no idea what this is. And for technical people? Literally everyone says that "nix is really hard to get started with". nix and nix-related developers, please, please find some real people and talk to them.

You probably don't have a problem that this solves. I.e., some people still download random zipfiles from the internet and install each individual app from a wizard dialog onto their Windows 10 machine. They find software repositories and package managers confusing and overengineered. I guess that's okay.

I don't find package managers confusing but I do, in fact, find them overengineered. They solve at most 75% of application management problems with the fallback for the other 25% being "compile it from source yourself" and it takes an army of unpaid third party maintainers to pull that off.

In my current estimation, Nix just solves an additional 5% at the cost of exponentially more overengineering.

Re: Nix-GUI: Make NixOS usable for non-technical users through settings / GUI

#45

Post by Zababa »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #3

Looking at the GUI, I have no idea what it does. I'm guessing that you actually need to know Nix to be able to use it, which kinda defeats the "usable for non-technical users" goal. I can see the value of it, if I ever learn Nix, and want a quick way to make modifications without having to google every possibilities.

> I'm guessing that you actually need to know Nix to be able to use it, which kinda defeats the "usable for non-technical users" goal.

I don't think that's true. Excel is usable by non-technical users. Part of it is due to the GUI, part of it is due to the easy packaging. But you still need to know spreadsheets to use it. This project does the same for Nix.

Re: Nix-GUI: Make NixOS usable for non-technical users through settings / GUI

#46

Post by Zababa »

dmitriid wrote: post #11
whateveracct wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It literally says what each field does.. Just because it doesn't have an obvious minimal modern UI doesn't mean it doesn't do its job. Gotta read I guess .. but then again Nix also in general has a prerequisite of "calm down and read." But then again, so does Linux! The only thing you need to do to be Nix-competent is not flip the table and blame the tool when you get an error you don't understand. (Same goes for Has…

> Make NixOS usable for non-technical users through a settings / package management GUI. ^ emphasis mine. What exactly does a non-techical user have to read to understand whatever's on the screenshot? Forget non-techincal, explain this to a technical person. Apparently this has something to do with sound? Have you or any nix-person ever seen a sound configuration screen for non-technical users? I mean this one is by…

This is exactly the same, although their choice of "sliding buttons" with text and color inside is a bit weird compared to checkboxes.

Re: Nix-GUI: Make NixOS usable for non-technical users through settings / GUI

#47

Post by tinco »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #25

A lot of odd Nix hate in here, or at least extreme dislike. NixOS is so very usable. There are a lot of foot-guns but that's true of Linux systems. It takes some time to get comfortable with all the different ways to configure stuff. There's a new language, a new build system, a new Linux distribution. I've spent very little time relative to say, figuring out dpkg or systemd, or learning Bash or C or Perl, or learnin…

Crazy thing about NixOS is that it's so good, all the bad parts can be excused. I like to go on forums and complain about how the Nix configuration language is horrible, and there's not much documentation on how to get general things done.

But that said, I'm still running NixOS on my servers. And no way that I'd ever go back to old fashioned provisioning scripts like Ansible.

Just yesterday I had a problem upgrading a machine that's been running for 3 years without updates, and it wouldn't upgrade to the latest version of NixOS because of some certificate issue I couldn't figure out. Tried a couple things, nothing worked, gave up and destroyed the box. Installed the latest version of NixOS on it, pulled my configuration from git and it's back online exactly how I want it.

It runs 5 websites in docker containers with a reverse proxy that automatically gets its SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt, some other services, and a tmux session with irssi. Everything neatly managed by systemd through unit files, everything set up from one simple nixos configuration.

If I'm complaining about NixOS, it's because the best server operating system in existence right now has flaws. Not because I'd ever go back to a traditional linux distribution.

Re: Nix-GUI: Make NixOS usable for non-technical users through settings / GUI

#48

Post by suchar »

I think NixOS would benefit from easily accessible collection of opinionated modules/profiles/configurations with minimal set of options. Something like gnome-desktop / sway-desktop / etc. Gnome actually does pretty good job here.

The point is: currently my NixOS and Home Manager configurations have over 2k LOC total. When you search for configurations on GitHub/Google you are likely to find complex ones. For example, quick search for "nixos gnome" (Google) gives me link to NixOS Wiki (which describes only Gnome part) and blog post (https://gvolpe.com/blog/gnome3-on-nixos/) which is useful but links to really huge configuration (https://github.com/gvolpe/nix-config) that is overwhelming to any beginner.

Great example of such approach is nixos-hardware (https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware) which provides one-line configuration covering hardware quirks.

Re: Nix-GUI: Make NixOS usable for non-technical users through settings / GUI

#49

Post by opan »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #9

What a coincidence. I was just asking about NixOS on Mastodon. Reposting (I'm on a mobile, little time to type): " a question on dev environment isolation. Is either #NixOS or #GUIX usable as an OS for day-to-day use (coding, browsing, occasional gaming)? Or is it better to just use their respective package managers on top of regular Linux? Also, anyone here doing desktop #virtualization? Is there a sense of running…

Guix System is very usable as a main OS if your hardware is compatible. Linux-libre gives some people trouble with their GPU or WiFi. I use a ThinkPad T440p with the WLAN card removed, and everything that remains works fine. If you need blobs for an AMD GPU or WLAN, you likely need to swap out linux-libre for linux in your config. I haven't done this myself, but I know a few people who have done so. Also consider that discussion of non-free bits like this are not allowed in the official IRC and mailing lists, so you'll have to either be on your own or find the semi-secret places where guix users use non-free things.

All that aside, I've spent time with NixOS and Guix System both, and much prefer the latter. Nix has more packages, but some of them (which I actually use in everyday life) are broken in odd ways where they work fine in Guix. I also like to use a distro without systemd when possible, and find the guix community feels more alive/active. Getting more Guix users (and packagers) will help narrow the gap as well. There are enough packages that I don't miss too much in daily use, and you can comfortably get all your emacs packages through guix, I just often can't try some new program when I first learn about it.

Re: Nix-GUI: Make NixOS usable for non-technical users through settings / GUI

#50

Post by catern »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #9

What a coincidence. I was just asking about NixOS on Mastodon. Reposting (I'm on a mobile, little time to type): " a question on dev environment isolation. Is either #NixOS or #GUIX usable as an OS for day-to-day use (coding, browsing, occasional gaming)? Or is it better to just use their respective package managers on top of regular Linux? Also, anyone here doing desktop #virtualization? Is there a sense of running…

You may already realize this, but you don't need to run a VM per project if you're using Nix; Nix lets you have as many self-contained development environments as you like, all on one machine without VMs or containers.
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