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Re: "Well, I botched my system trying to upgrade from Ubuntu..."
Nice! I love Arch. I've done the Arch manual install many years ago a couple systems (started with a VM on a Windows machine and used it on my main laptop until it was stolen) when I was just cutting my teeth on Linux. I still run it now (in the form of Manjaro) on my Pinebook! I know if I had been running Arch on my desktop instead of Ubuntu, I'd have had a much easier time troubleshooting. The Arch wiki is such a valuable resource.
Sep 01 · 4 months ago
🚀 lanterm [OP] · Sep 01 at 23:20:
And thanks! I just installed Nix with the minimal installer and I'm pleased at how "easy" everything feels. I'm trying out the Mate DM for the first time because all it takes it the following line in your configuration file:
services.displayManager.mate.enable = true;
And to uninstall it, you just remove the line! I know there's a lot happening under the hood and this is only just scratching the surface, but I'm very happy so far.
I had been using NixOS for over a year, but eventually I gave up and switched to Void, which I'm happy with ever since. When NixOS just works it works great and the ability to easily roll back to one of the previous versions is amazing, but imo the documentation is very much lacking, most options for the config are not documented at all and if you try doing something that doesn't involve Nix packages, like compiling a program yourself or using a python package not in Nix repos (oh the horror), things are going to break quickly.
Sorry, I just had to throw in my two cents, but I hope your journey with NixOS is going to be great, I'd be happy to know how it goes later down the line.
🚀 lanterm [OP] · Sep 04 at 18:23:
That's definitely some valuable insight! Thanks for sharing. NixOS definitely seems like a read-the-source (of the nixpkgs repo) and read-the-forum (their discourse instance) kind of adventure. Everybody seems to configure their system differently, from going all-in on flakes to only installing packages system-wide. I haven't had to get my hands dirty too much yet like you describe, but I'm sure I'll reach that point eventually with enough use.
I hadn't heard of Void before! I'm curious why you chose Void over other distros, and what your runner-up would have been. Did you choose it because of the XBPS package manager? It does seem neat that they support building all of your own packages from scratch.
Using a global configuration.nix is probably the easiest at the beginning, but flakes and home-manager are definitely the most pure NixOS way to manage system (with enough patience) - you should probably try both and experiment.
I actually chose Void Linux mainly because it's lightweight and uses runit as the init system (I wanted to try sth non-systemd and it proved to work well. I don't have to wait 2m for a service when rebooting, I can just symlink/del dirs to enable/disable services and use simple shell scripts). XBPS is a amazing too, probably the fastest package manager I've ever used (apk excluded). In general, I think Void really sticks to core UNIX philosophy, whether one likes it or not.
Oh I'd probably consider Artix as my runner-up as it's similar to Arch, but allows for use of other init systems (runit or OpenRC for example). I haven't used it because I've heard that repos separate from Arch aren't as extensive and not everything works well with every init system offered by Artix, but I've heard recently from my friend that he's been using it for quite some time and it's pretty stable.
@zeeroth I've been using Artix (OpenRC) on all of my workstations for around 4 to 5 years and it's very stable. There are sometimes problems with some updates when a maintainer didn't upgrade a corresponding library, but that can easily be coped with a temporary downgrade of the package. I didn't experience any bigger breakage (fingers crossed). The only problem I personally have is with the zfs-dkms package which only supports the actual LTS kernel, which I use anyway. If they switch to a newer LTS kernel, idk. Otherwise I'm very satisfied with Artix.
Maybe the Artix repos aren't as big as Archs, but you can add the original Arch repos to your pacman config and use these. I wouldn't consider Artix a beginners distro but if you are using Void and know your way around Arch there won't be any problems.
It also fully supports the AUR if you use trizen as your package manager.
🦆 CitySlicker · Sep 05 at 01:14:
If you want to mess around with Nix just go for it. I’ve never used Nix, but I have used messed around with Guix some and hear the calls to give it a spin on my laptop.
Currently my laptop runs Artix (dinit), desktop Ubuntu, Debian on my two single board servers, and OpenWRT on my router.
For the most part district doesn’t matter, so give Nix a go and if you hate it Ubuntu will be waiting for you
Well, I botched my system trying to upgrade from Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04 ahead of release schedule and at this fork in the road I decided to back up the disk then flash a new OS on it. This is raising all sorts of questions like, Which OS should I run and What does my data backup/restore strategy look like? I could have spent time troubleshooting the system, fiddling with config files and reading log files. But I'll be honest, part of me wanted a fresh start. Since I started this draft, I've...