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Fedora Atomic Desktops

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Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#101

Post by walteweiss »

tapoxi wrote: post #20
Arisaka1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried getting to Fedora but the package manager was slower even to deb, the hardware video acceleration in browsers required me to juggle drivers from fusion due to licensing problems, and I use AMD which I would expect to not have issues.

The package manager is a little slower but `dnf history` is a lifechanger. It's so easy to list the history of all transactions and undo a specific one. There are huge performance improvements coming in DNF5, scheduled for Fedora 41 (this fall).

Where can I read about it?

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#102

Post by agrama »

NewJazz wrote: post #94
detuur wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I can't be the only one who feels that Nix is doing the right thing the wrong way. The right thing being reproducible, declarative, composable environments; the wrong thing being its language and tooling. Too often I feel like serious Nix users spend a distressing amount of time manually doing package manager tasks, so the way forward is to stop doing exactly that. Going back to imperative composition is a step…

FWIW I am starting to use home manager on my new macOS workstation, and I haven't had to dig too deep into Nix, nixpkgs, or NixOS. I might hit limits soon as I rice my neovim install.

Make sure to have a look at nixvim: https://github.com/nix-community/nixvim

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#103

Post by hollerith »

exe34 wrote: post #99
hollerith wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of the garbage collector does not negate the wastefulness of updating every package on the system just because the hash of the C library has changed: even if all the old versions of the packages get garbage collected soon enough, it still wastes network and storage bandwidth to download all the new packages into /nix/store/. NixOS has some good ideas, but also some seemingly boneheaded or impractical on…

This is what allows you to have multiple versions of something and all its dependencies installed and not conflict with each other!

No it is not. That is my whole point: NixOS could have one without the other.

Consider modifying NixOS to remove the requirement that the long hex id in the name of a package in /nix/store/ is a cryptographic hash of (among other things) the hashes of every package the package depends on (thereby eliminating the need to upgrade every package on the system every time the libc packages is updated). I am pretty sure you can do that while retaining the property that it is easy to have multiple versions of something installed that don't conflict with each other. I have not actually done that (I have not actually modified NixOS in that way, then tested the result, e.g., by making it my daily driver for a while) which is why I'm using qualifiers like "I am pretty sure", but I'm confident enough it can be done that I consider it worth bringing up in online conversations about NixOS. The cryptographic hash gives you a guarantee that a binary package you got from the NixOS package servers has not been adulterated in some way on its way to you--a guarantee that you can check without your having to go through the trouble of building the package yourself, but IIUC that guarantee is not actually used anywhere to make the supply chain any more secure.

In general NixOS seems to be bad at security or not to care about security: for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36268776

Again there are good ideas in NixOS (including ideas that seem like they could be used to meaningfully increase security) and I hope anyone creating a new distro studies NixOS, but as a distro to be actually used in anger in the present day I am not impressed.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#104

Post by exe34 »

hollerith wrote: post #103
exe34 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what allows you to have multiple versions of something and all its dependencies installed and not conflict with each other!

No it is not. That is my whole point: NixOS could have one without the other. Consider modifying NixOS to remove the requirement that the long hex id in the name of a package in /nix/store/ is a cryptographic hash of (among other things) the hashes of every package the package depends on (thereby eliminating the need to upgrade every package on the system every time the libc packages is updated). I am pretty sure you…

These look like great ideas, I look forward to trying out your branch! It's pretty easy with Nix, I'd just have to NIX_PATH=/to/nixpkgs-hollerith/ nix-shell -p to try it out. Good luck!

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#105

Post by torstenvl »

walteweiss wrote: post #100
torstenvl wrote: post #27

I like the idea of atomic base systems; it's very BSD-like. I may have to give this a try.

Is BSD this way? I never used it, but I haven’t read about it either.

Yes, the base system is a cohesive whole, not a set of packages.

You don't update the kernel separately from, say, the core user land, the way you'd update linux-kernel and binutils as separate packages on a linux distribution.

BSD doesn't use the term "atomic" but as near as I can tell it's the same idea.

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#106

Post by jcastro »

curt15 wrote: post #93
jcastro wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`/usr/local` is writeable so no change there, that should work fine. I keep a container as my "day to day" linux and just have my terminal autolaunch into mine. You can use any distro's container for this so it's personal preference. I'm using Prompt, it's a new terminal designed to make the toolbox/distrobox flow much nicer: https://gitlab.gnome.org/chergert/prompt It's still relatively new so it isn't on flathub ye…

How do you deal with the lack of systemd in the container? Where do you put software that ship systemd unit files?

I use containerized versions of things, ubuntu and chainguard images mostly.

You can always create containers with init if that's how you want to do that though. Some distros publish images that come that way: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/useful_...

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#107

Post by exe34 »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #17
exe34 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if there's the slightest issue with the update, you can just reboot into the previous generation and continue working until you have time to figure it out later, or just wait until it's fixed!

You probably don't even need to reboot. Only once have I broken a generation badly enough I actually needed to reboot. And that was entirely my fault: I mis-configured PAM and couldn't sudo anymore to switch back.

I don't think it does hot patching the kernel?

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#108

Post by curt15 »

jcastro wrote: post #106
curt15 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with the lack of systemd in the container? Where do you put software that ship systemd unit files?

I use containerized versions of things, ubuntu and chainguard images mostly. You can always create containers with init if that's how you want to do that though. Some distros publish images that come that way: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/useful_...

Thanks, that link is chockful of useful tips!

Re: Fedora Atomic Desktops

#109

Post by iknowstuff »

LooseMarmoset wrote: post #80
iknowstuff wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“What fragility is that? The one described in detail in this document?” Yes, indeed it is

so, installing random software from random repositories equals fragility? that doesn't seem specific to apt at all. however the article is written Fedora-specific, so maybe people don't like to point out that dnf/yum is susceptible to the same problem. In fact, the article doesn't even try to call out apt, or fragility. There is a use case for immutable distributions, just as there is one for those distributions whic…

Yes, I do think that is fragility. Immutable distros, iOS etc have it right - installing software shouldn’t be able to fuck up the system.

People gotta install from “random repositories” because shit they need is not in official repos, further showcasing the shortcomings of the entire setup and its reliance on maintainers. This derogatory statement only works against your argument, rather than supporting it.

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