10mo ago

Arch celebrating plasma 6 dropping a week after NixOS

Picture of Skinner from "The Simpsons" with the linux logo on his face and the word "Pathetic" in the bottom center of the picture.

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...NixOS is the new Arch Linux. Change my mind.
- Hardly, NixOS documentation is trash. The Arch Wiki is essentially the platonic ideal of documentation.
  
  Truefax
  
  Maybe you should learn to read the manual or debug your system without hand holding 😉
- The difference is I can upgrade my NixOS without breaking everything hahaha. But it has gotten a lot more popular recently, which I think is your analogy? Or because people always bring it up now lol
  
  yea i think its the popularity spike. if only there were more docs on flakes though.
  
  I still don't completely get their point, TBH.
  And the Nix language seems to be intentionally confusingly close to json.
  
  The similarities are superficial at best. The only thing similar is that it uses braces for attribute sets (objects) and square brackets for lists. And I guess quotes for strings.
  But otherwise it's a full (functional) programming language, with functions, variable bindings, etc.
  Flakes aren't perfect, but they are really good for ensuring that you have completely reproducible builds since the version used for every dependency is pinned.
  
  control the versions of the repo and packages
  config the official repo (allow unfree packages for example) that doesn't work unless you're on nixos
  add packages from a git repo
  update package definitions (think apt update)
  
  iirc theyre meant to improve reproducibility by using pinned versions of stuff like nixpkgs instead of inheriting from your system which could be a problem if for example someone on 23.11 sends a deriv to someone on 24.05
  
  If only wiki was as good as Arch's...
  
  exactly. cant blame them tho, its unofficial.
  
  I agree, altough I'm trying to use them here and there, i'm still very confused by it.
  
  i actually managed to somewhat break it. But a rollback just immediately fixed it again.
- It doesn't have a wiki as good as Arch, yet
- Nah, NixOS has a very deserved air of superiority. Arch just fakes its one.

63 comments