401–410 of 427 posts
I used to think Flatpaks were a huge pain the butt, but over the last few years, I moved to using them for all third party software that I run on my Fedora Linux workstation. Zoom, Slack, Spotify, Steam, Discord, Obsidian all run without issues and they get consistent updates. I am convinced now that they are one of the best ways to ship commercial software on to Linux desktop. Flatpak has been a key part of me becom…
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I don't use NixOS, but from what I've read, you should just use NixOS. All kidding aside, I installed NixOS (it installs like any other distro, it's just that after that you are completely lost), but it's a real paradigm shift. I'm just hoping for Ubuntu Declarative Donkey at this point and hope someone addresses the learning curve and the specialist language and tools used. I'd hate to invest all this time and then…
I don't use NixOS, or have any great interest in it tbh. But this podcast featuring Martin Wimpress (of Linux Mate and other projects) does a decent job of describing what NixOS is, and previews some ongoing and upcoming efforts to address the learning curve and lingo around it. https://linuxdowntime.com/category/podcast/
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Honestly just inertia. Those are not servers (where you could easily migrate to another distro taking advantage of infra-as-code tools), they are a desktop and a HTPC. I have accumulated a lot of custom dotfiles, Ubuntu-specific utilities and scripts over time, not all of them would work in another distro unchanged. Removing Snap is not that hard, the "hardest" part is making sure that Firefox is installed from the M…
ZorinOS is Ubuntu but better.
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> Is NixOS a cult? Rather than being a cult in itself, there's a crowd of very vocal fanboys similar to the RIIR stike force. Pestering people with "why don't you use $thing" is not good advocacy.
Indeed the communication factor is critical. I've been around long enough to see plenty of good tech fail simply because backers are not very good communicators and I think the top level comment is a great example of this. I am just a lowly end user, I just want to be able to install and run the latest version of PrusaSlicer or Zoom on whatever Linux distribution I am using. I don't obviously see how to do that with…
nix-env -iA nixpkgs.zoom-us
nix profile install nixpkgs#zoom-us
(For proprietary software like Zoom, I think Flatpak might be preferable even to many Nix users like me.)
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Even better, install Devuan, which is Debian without systemd (the attempt to turn Linux into Windows). Many former Debian developers are now working on Devuan.
> systemd (the attempt to turn Linux into Windows) systemd was actually inspired by launchd, not Windows. But I guess systemd, Windows and launchd do share one thing in common which is not having a bunch of bandaid shell scripts hanging the system together.
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I think in conversation we don't separate the fundamental concepts that Nix implements from the particular implementation. The fundamental idea is this: Every package is built in a "hermetic" environment that guarantees that the only inputs are the ones you have explicitly specified. Those inputs include tools, source files, compilers, build instructions etc., all specified by a hash. Those inputs themselves can then…
Indeed; GNU Guix is essentially the same thing, but with a different language and CLI (the two main source of complaints about Nix). Similar to how Git has a notorious CLI; but that doesn't invalidate the idea of DVCS (with alternative implementations in Mercurial, Bazaar, Darcs, etc.)
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Many things are holding Linux on the Desktop, but its more so that the competition is doing better and the Desktop market shifted First, Windows caught up, Linux used to have things that windows didnt in the late 90s and early 2000s, not most linux only app have windows ports, you can run any linux app on windows WSL , and now windows also have powershell Second, apple made a comeback, now many people who dont want w…
Or for disgruntled slaveware users, who got pushed over the edge by the software companies ("Windows really trying to force you to use a micro$oft account these days", or "Apple rolling out their spyware to scan for photos on your phone and reporting to them despite saying not to"[1]). 1. https://sneak.berlin/20230115/macos-scans-your-local-files-n...
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We're obviously using extremely different definitions of the word "completely". Flatpak sandboxes more than just file system access.
And write access to $HOME lets a process climb out of the sandbox. Trying to make sense of Flatpak's threat model is just near-impossible. It might protect you from something, if the specific app's configuration told it to do so. Starting a random Flatpak app, you have no guarantees, and the UX doesn't communicate anything about this.
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Is NixOS a cult? Every time someone posts about Linux packaging, there's a "you should just use NixOS" comment. Although it provides its own solution to the Linux packaging problem, it's a single solution that comes with a whole load of baggage with it. It is not the panacea its proponents wants us to believe it is.
I think in conversation we don't separate the fundamental concepts that Nix implements from the particular implementation. The fundamental idea is this: Every package is built in a "hermetic" environment that guarantees that the only inputs are the ones you have explicitly specified. Those inputs include tools, source files, compilers, build instructions etc., all specified by a hash. Those inputs themselves can then…
Because a) They're not the only ones working towards it, but they like to paint it that way and b) Their implementation is not the only correct way, and again they like to paint it that way.
The main people behind it may not feel like that, but the hype creates a very repulsive aura around the project for some of us. I just don't want to touch NixOS just because of the community and hype around it.
There are many ways to achieve this reproducibility, and the old school ways are not very behind when compared to NixOS. Some things are achieved differently, but it's perfectly achievable with Debian and RedHat packaging infrastructures.
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And write access to $HOME lets a process climb out of the sandbox. Trying to make sense of Flatpak's threat model is just near-impossible. It might protect you from something, if the specific app's configuration told it to do so. Starting a random Flatpak app, you have no guarantees, and the UX doesn't communicate anything about this.
We are in a transition period. Starting with getting apps packaged in flatpak even if it doesn’t improve security, and then once that’s all done we can start tightening the restrictions.