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NixOS and the Art of OS Configuration (2018)

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Re: NixOS and the Art of OS Configuration (2018)

#101

Post by joepie91_ »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #46
anandsuresh wrote: post #8

Love to see more adoption of Nix and NixOS. I started my Nix journey a little over a year ago, and I regret not having switched sooner. A package-manager that also ships an operating system that can be customized from the bootloader up, using a purely functional programming language is the perfect configuration management tool! It does have some rough edges, and I did lose some hair figuring things out early on, but…

> Love to see more adoption of Nix and NixOS. I don't want a 'journey' to use my OS. I don't want to learn a whole new language and set of overengineered abstractions to solve what I see as, at most, 5% more of application installation problems that are already 75% solved by package managers[0]. If the Nix community wants more people using Nix, they'll have to make it more attractive for those of us who do not want t…

> set of overengineered abstractions

While there are definitely a lot of remaining documentation and usability issues with Nix as it stands today, the core model is far from 'overengineered' - if anything, it's orders of magnitude less complex than the organically-grown cobbled-together pile of tools and conventions that 'traditional' distros are made out of.

Nix having a well-defined, complete, specified-upfront, coherent model doesn't make it 'overengineered'; it just means that the tools were designed from the start to help you manage the complexity of system management, rather than just kind of leaving it implicit and letting the end user and/or packager deal with the fallout later through an ever-growing collection of workarounds and patches and scripts.

It's completely valid to decide that NixOS is not (yet) for you due to the learning curve that still exists; I frequently warn people away from NixOS (when they are not prepared to deal with that) for this precise reason. But please don't conflate that with 'bad design'.

Re: NixOS and the Art of OS Configuration (2018)

#102

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

anandsuresh wrote: post #96
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't want to learn git precisely because there are version control systems that accomplish the things I need in a much simpler way. I only bother using git at all because some FOSS projects I've worked with use it. Hell, my impression is that most people who use git don't bother really learning it, they just keep a recipe book of how to branch, commit, etc. and then rely on stack overflow to un-fuck the r…

I could not agree more. Most people, IMO, are workflow junkies! It doesn't matter how good/bad/ugly the tool is; if it works, it stays forever! And git is a perfect example of a tool that is complex, but survives because it became the gold-standard for FOSS. Having said that, wouldn't you agree that same recipe-book approach is also true for traditional system configuration/administration?

Yes and for the same reason: people don't want to deal with systems that are overly complex for their needs, and OS configuration (especially in Linux) tends to have a ludicrous amount of needless complexity.

But the thing about Nix is that it just adds even more complexity. As was mentioned elsethread, in order to be effective with Nix you need to understand all the complexities of Nix and Linux. And the thing about Linux is that we have a ton of adequate recipe books out there already.

Re: NixOS and the Art of OS Configuration (2018)

#103

Post by joepie91_ »

ostenning wrote: post #44

How does KDE play with Nix? I recall KDE shits all over the place with all the different cfg files it has. I had trouble trying to store them in my git repo. Would be awesome to use Nix to bring some sanity to KDE config

Mixed. Some things - like the theme switcher - break constantly because KDE has no awareness of NixOS and its configuration management approach, and indeed its configuration setup seems to change all the time.

The base setup works fine though, I've only had some core functionality break once, and that was after an upgrade to a new NixOS version - the progress display integration thingem for the file manager was broken.

Re: NixOS and the Art of OS Configuration (2018)

#104

Post by SkyMarshal »

skerit wrote: post #69
altgans wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to NixOS half a year ago. The reason? I fell in love with literate programming (I use [1]); being able to write (and read) your whole OS configuration is the dream! There are few bad sides to NixOS though. The community consists mostly of programmers, which means I am missing some creative tools (mockups, mindmaps, ..). In the future I will be able to provide/build them myself, but it is not a smooth trans…

I really like the idea of NixOS, but there not being a single clear guide of how to set everything up (and the messy documentation) is the biggest thing holding me back. I also really don't like wasting so much time on tinkering with my system the way I used to do. But I'm seeing so much Nix news these past few weeks, I guess it'll be better in a few years!

>I really like the idea of NixOS, but there not being a single clear guide of how to set everything up (and the messy documentation) is the biggest thing holding me back.

Yeah this part is messy, and why I always disclaim that I had a learning curve of several months to make the transition. However, my system setup is a little more complex than the standard install - mirrored ZFS root drives on dual m.2 drives, with mirrored boot partitions. That wasn't in the docs, needed a blog post to explain it [1].

>I also really don't like wasting so much time on tinkering with my system the way I used to do.

I've found that once you get everything configured to your liking, you spend similar or less time tinkering than on other OS's, just because the entire system config is captured in a single config file now. There's some up-front learning and work required, but after that it's smooth sailing.

[1]:https://elis.nu/blog/2019/08/encrypted-zfs-mirror-with-mirro...

Re: NixOS and the Art of OS Configuration (2018)

#105

Post by SkyMarshal »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #63
spindle wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always think it's worth mentioning explicitly that NixOS makes it not just possible to put everything including the root file system on ZFS, it makes it completely easy.

It's not unique at that though. FreeBSD has had this for a decade. And Ubuntu is adding it now as an installer option. PS: I do like the idea of NixOS and its USPs which are indeed unique :) For me what's stopping me is the learning curve. I don't mind learning per se but if I put the time in it I'd like it to be for something that's useful in more places. Like ansible.

>It's not unique at that though. FreeBSD has had this for a decade. And Ubuntu is adding it now as an installer option.

Right, but FreeBSD isn't Linux, if you want both ZFS and the Linux ecosystem, then I would argue NixOS is the best at that right now.

I tried Ubuntu and ZFS recently in a VM just to see how it worked. The installer handles a simple, standard ZFS config just fine. But if you want to do anything more complex, then you're doing manual configuration, at which point it's better to just use NixOS, where all the manual config is done in the main NixOS config file.

Re: NixOS and the Art of OS Configuration (2018)

#106

Post by SkyMarshal »

altgans wrote: post #50
anandsuresh wrote: post #8

Love to see more adoption of Nix and NixOS. I started my Nix journey a little over a year ago, and I regret not having switched sooner. A package-manager that also ships an operating system that can be customized from the bootloader up, using a purely functional programming language is the perfect configuration management tool! It does have some rough edges, and I did lose some hair figuring things out early on, but…

I switched to NixOS half a year ago. The reason? I fell in love with literate programming (I use [1]); being able to write (and read) your whole OS configuration is the dream! There are few bad sides to NixOS though. The community consists mostly of programmers, which means I am missing some creative tools (mockups, mindmaps, ..). In the future I will be able to provide/build them myself, but it is not a smooth trans…

>The community consists mostly of programmers, which means I am missing some creative tools (mockups, mindmaps, ..). In the future I will be able to provide/build them myself, but it is not a smooth transition from my previous arch setup.

Any time you need a package that's not in nixpkgs, feel free to submit a packaging request for it:

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/new/choose (Issues -> New Issue -> Packaging Request)

Especially if you explain that it's a popular tool in the creative community, that kind of thing is useful for the Nix packaging team to be made aware of. Even if someone doesn't package it right away, there's a good chance it will make it into the next 6-month release cycle.

Re: NixOS and the Art of OS Configuration (2018)

#107

Post by anandsuresh »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #102
anandsuresh wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not agree more. Most people, IMO, are workflow junkies! It doesn't matter how good/bad/ugly the tool is; if it works, it stays forever! And git is a perfect example of a tool that is complex, but survives because it became the gold-standard for FOSS. Having said that, wouldn't you agree that same recipe-book approach is also true for traditional system configuration/administration?

Yes and for the same reason: people don't want to deal with systems that are overly complex for their needs, and OS configuration (especially in Linux) tends to have a ludicrous amount of needless complexity. But the thing about Nix is that it just adds even more complexity . As was mentioned elsethread, in order to be effective with Nix you need to understand all the complexities of Nix and Linux. And the thing abou…

Complexity exists and is going to get worse with time. The root cause is the prevalent software development paradigm: millions of developers/teams working simultaneously on different parts of the software stack, with an imperfect understanding of an ever-evolving system. "Needless" therefore is a matter of perspective. Reasonable defaults and recipes are a proposed way of dealing with said complexity, but what is reasonable is again based on imperfect understanding, and is therefore only going to work under specific conditions that are not written in code.

Nix offers a way to easily customize and override said "reasonable defaults" across packages written in different programming languages and compiled using a variety of build toolchains. Doing so requires using a common language for expressing defaults and overriding them. IMO, that is not adding complexity, but taming it to make it reasonably easy for individual developers and teams, small and large.

I'd argue that the traditional stack relies on way too many tools, each designed for a limited purpose, and making a LOT of assumptions about the target system. This IMO is far more complex than learning one language and framework.

Re: NixOS and the Art of OS Configuration (2018)

#108

Post by m45t3r »

pxc wrote: post #91
tifadg1 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. So there's a solution for dot files, if a bit too involved. Currently for a low effort approach when backing up something that I know requires a bit of reparse, I use ansible templates, which basically replaces 1 string with another in a file. So far this always worked. What about application files? I.e. backing-up/restoring firefox. In it's simplest form it's copying ~/.mozilla which I appreciate is no differ…

Imo Home Manager isn't really about dotfiles. It's a NixOS-like module system for configuration unprivileged programs and services. You could use it, for example, to install and configure systemd user services for Emacs to run as a daemon, and for gpg-agent to run and work as your SSH agent. It lets you bundle specific versions of programs (with patches or configuration changes) in a declarative, reproducible way on…

BTW, there is a Firefox module in Home Manager for those who want a customizable Firefox. Like, I set my custom `about:config` flags there and every time I reinstall my system I am sure that I didn't forget that random config to enable hardware acceleration again. You can also manage extensions with it, but for this part I prefer to use Firefox Sync itself.

At least for me, this is even better than backup/restore. Generally I don't want to preserve cache or cookies between installations, I just want my config there.

Re: NixOS and the Art of OS Configuration (2018)

#109

Post by pxc »

altgans wrote: post #85
skerit wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like the idea of NixOS, but there not being a single clear guide of how to set everything up (and the messy documentation) is the biggest thing holding me back. I also really don't like wasting so much time on tinkering with my system the way I used to do. But I'm seeing so much Nix news these past few weeks, I guess it'll be better in a few years!

I think you can get going with little to no knowledge. Setup the system, choose a few cool options and packages, and go rebuild. Simple as that. The difficulty comes from the advanced topics. Modularizing your setup, writing your own packages, generally going off the beaten path. I did not do any of that (yet). I will in the future, but I am fine with my low-level setup. One machine, one user. A bit later I moved to…

NixOS' saving grace when it comes to the learning curve is that experimentation is extraordinarily safe, thanks to the declarative config and rollback functionality. If you don't know what you're doing, you can pretty painlessly get away with just fucking around.

Re: NixOS and the Art of OS Configuration (2018)

#110

Post by pxc »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #46
anandsuresh wrote: post #8

Love to see more adoption of Nix and NixOS. I started my Nix journey a little over a year ago, and I regret not having switched sooner. A package-manager that also ships an operating system that can be customized from the bootloader up, using a purely functional programming language is the perfect configuration management tool! It does have some rough edges, and I did lose some hair figuring things out early on, but…

> Love to see more adoption of Nix and NixOS. I don't want a 'journey' to use my OS. I don't want to learn a whole new language and set of overengineered abstractions to solve what I see as, at most, 5% more of application installation problems that are already 75% solved by package managers[0]. If the Nix community wants more people using Nix, they'll have to make it more attractive for those of us who do not want t…

> [package managers] are already an overengineered and under-delivering solution in my opinion.

This is kinda nuts to me. Every time I use a system that doesn't offer proper package management, it makes me wish I had a decent package manager. What do you think is better than a modern package manager for solving the same problems?

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