this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
127 points (93.8% liked)
Linux
48334 readers
667 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because it has abominable documentation. Some tools built on top of nix on the other hand have stellar documentation (devenv and jetbox come to mind). The tools even try hard to hide nix because they know it's a goddamn nightmare for beginners to use it.
The CLI is a mess due to the indecisiveness of the nix maintainers whether they want flakes or not. So much so that the official manual doesn't use flakes, but many guides on the internet immediately go into
nix dev#yadadadawhich leaves beginners and mid-term users alike very confused.Another point is that graphical applications can't use OpenGL without dirty hacks like nixgl. Not only that, installing GUI applications using nix doesn't make them show up in your desktop environment (start menu, finder, whatever). No, you need to either manually create
.desktopfiles or install another tool likehome-managerto have them show (and not work properly because of OpenGL).To top it off, unless you know better, it's command-line only. SnowflakeOS is building GUI tools around nix, but they aren't like say Discover or the Gnome Appstore: you can't install the GUI and have everything working - no, you need to figure everything out.
In short,
nixis absolutely nowhere close for desktop user adoption, much less mainstream linux adoption (dev, sysadmin, tester, or whatever other technical role exists).CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Flakes confuse me.
Guides online say "oh yeah just do this, it's easy" and don't mention flakes at all.
So I try the thing and it says ARE YOU FUCKING SURE, YOU IDIOT, YOU ABSOLUTE MORON, YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING WITHOUT ENABLING FLAKES AND YOU HAVEN'T DONE THAT SO YOU CLEARLY DON'T DESERVE NICE THINGS but like, is there just no non-flakes version of that thing, what's the point of having an option that's not enabled by default if you can't do anything without it on
@moonpiedumplings@programming.dev shares my pain and also explained what I was doing wrong:
https://programming.dev/comment/7537131
Flakes is still experimental. NixOS devs takes a bunch of time to release that. So most experienced users have enabled Flakes since years. Two different systems are available, which does not help ease of learning.
Right but like "be able to do anything" requires you to have Flakes enabled