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How Nix and NixOS get so close to perfect

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Re: How Nix and NixOS get so close to perfect

#71

Post by thrown12 »

xena wrote: post #58
encryptluks2 wrote: post #32

I'm starting to see more of a cult attitude with Nix. It is like the Arch Linux crowd (I use Arch) but much worse. I think is is great that Nix has provided something valuable to a lot of people, but so does a lot of software and tools. Nix fills a void in package management. It is like Ansible or Terraform for a semi-idempotent distro. It is probably quicker in most ways than building something similar with other co…

Author of the post and survivor of several cults here. Nix is nothing like a cult. There is no behavior control, information control, thought control or emotion control at work. There are just people that are passionate about the tool and want to see it thrive. I would hardly call this a cult, more of just an interest group with weird nerds in it. Honestly after a while the language starts to fade into the background…

No post body was provided.

Re: How Nix and NixOS get so close to perfect

#72

Post by viraptor »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #32

I'm starting to see more of a cult attitude with Nix. It is like the Arch Linux crowd (I use Arch) but much worse. I think is is great that Nix has provided something valuable to a lot of people, but so does a lot of software and tools. Nix fills a void in package management. It is like Ansible or Terraform for a semi-idempotent distro. It is probably quicker in most ways than building something similar with other co…

> It is like Ansible or Terraform for a semi-idempotent distro

"Like" does a lot of work here. Those systems go one way: what if we applied this concept to managing existing systems. Nix goes the other: what if we built a system around this concept. I think that's a nice elevator pitch, but misses a lot otherwise.

Re: How Nix and NixOS get so close to perfect

#73

Post by viraptor »

thrown12 wrote: post #71
xena wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author of the post and survivor of several cults here. Nix is nothing like a cult. There is no behavior control, information control, thought control or emotion control at work. There are just people that are passionate about the tool and want to see it thrive. I would hardly call this a cult, more of just an interest group with weird nerds in it. Honestly after a while the language starts to fade into the background…

Quoted post unavailable.

Survivor of a cult does not necessarily mean that someone joined a cult themselves. Kids escaping environment they were born in may be survivors of a cult. People with spouses who joined a cult may be survivors. Environments may change, leaving a mainstream church in a specific area may mean leaving a cult. Etc. Don't look down on them unless you know all the details.

Re: How Nix and NixOS get so close to perfect

#74

Post by thrown12 »

viraptor wrote: post #73
thrown12 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Survivor of a cult does not necessarily mean that someone joined a cult themselves. Kids escaping environment they were born in may be survivors of a cult. People with spouses who joined a cult may be survivors. Environments may change, leaving a mainstream church in a specific area may mean leaving a cult. Etc. Don't look down on them unless you know all the details.

Sure, _one_ cult, but several?

Mom being in the Shining Path and Dad in Heaven's Gate sounds like it would make for rather awkward dinners.

Re: How Nix and NixOS get so close to perfect

#75

Post by ElonMuskrat »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #22

I don't think it's very perfect at all. It clearly appeals strongly to people managing cloud servers because it's basically the same kind of technology as Ansible or the many alternatives. Makes sense to use the same kind of tech you know through and through on your desktop as well. To me personally it doesn't really have much appeal.. Being able to replicate my desktop from scratch is not something I need often. And…

> It clearly appeals strongly to people managing cloud servers I manage cloud servers, on-prem servers etc. and I don't want to deal with Nix/NixOS.

> it's basically the same kind of technology as Ansible or the many alternatives It's not Ansible because Ansible cannot guarantee state convergence.

Re: How Nix and NixOS get so close to perfect

#76

Post by alberth »

>> "bad documentation"

One thing I still can't figure out is if nix (or flakes) allows you to pin packages to a specific version. Does anyone now if that's possible and how?

E.g. (pseudo code below)

services.nginx.version="1.21.4"

services.nginx.enable=true

Re: How Nix and NixOS get so close to perfect

#77

Post by xena »

alberth wrote: post #76

>> "bad documentation" One thing I still can't figure out is if nix (or flakes) allows you to pin packages to a specific version. Does anyone now if that's possible and how? E.g. (pseudo code below) services.nginx.version="1.21.4" services.nginx.enable=true

You'd really need to set the package to a specific overridden version of nginx. See here for how to make such an override: https://blog.thomasheartman.com/posts/nix-override-packages-.... Then you would set `services.nginx.package = pkgs.nginx.override ...;`.

Re: How Nix and NixOS get so close to perfect

#78

Post by sshine »

tjoff wrote: post #57
ris wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And honestly, the package situation is the biggest downfall of nix(os), ... but it has a long way to go. I have a big problem with "it has a long way to go" arguments. "It has a long way to go" in comparison to what? Every project I know of could be described as having "a long way to go". If we're comparing it with ubuntu/debian, there are few packages that ubuntu/debian have that nixpkgs is missing. On the other h…

> I have a big problem with "it has a long way to go" arguments. "It has a long way to go" in comparison to what? Every project I know of could be described as having "a long way to go". In comparison to any other mainstream OS nixos is going to have a lot of friction for most usecases. That is what I mean with it having long ways to go. Part of that is configuration. Other part of it is the package system being very…

I run Ubuntu and MacOS because I don’t want my OS to be my hobby. I’ve run LFS, Slackware, Gentoo, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Arch, Ubuntu Server (on laptop). I’ve spent a lot of time tweaking Xmonad, custom keyboard layouts, etc.

I would love for a distro with declarative configuration management. But I don’t have time for more hobbies right now.

Re: How Nix and NixOS get so close to perfect

#79

Post by BaculumMeumEst »

I’ve been trying out GUIX, but I wasn’t able to figure out a good way to do rust development on it. Tools like Cargo and Rust analyzer are extremely useful but introduce a lot of complexity which doesn’t seem to mix well with functional package managers like guix and nix.

Re: How Nix and NixOS get so close to perfect

#80

Post by xena »

thrown12 wrote: post #71
xena wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author of the post and survivor of several cults here. Nix is nothing like a cult. There is no behavior control, information control, thought control or emotion control at work. There are just people that are passionate about the tool and want to see it thrive. I would hardly call this a cult, more of just an interest group with weird nerds in it. Honestly after a while the language starts to fade into the background…

Quoted post unavailable.

A positive about that whole experience is that it's made me way better at clickbait, which seems to have worked because you've been interacting with my content at all.

One cannot choose where they incarnate in this plane. Nor can they choose the religious preferences of the people they incarnate around. You kinda have to just roll with the punches and hope something decent comes out of everything.

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