I’ve been using Linux for nearly 30 years and I recently noped out of NixOS. It’s a great concept, but I’m old and I don’t want to spend the rest of my days configuring stuff just to get to where I would be in 30 minutes on a less rigorously designed distro.
That is, until your distro releases an update and you’re like “what do you mean the update failed? So does that mean the update script rolled the changes back?” and then you find out your entire system is in a half updated state and you need to clean install
I’m in an interesting place because I installed tumbleweed as a server. At some point there was a change to networking and when I updated, networking didn’t work anymore, so I had to roll back to just before the update. I don’t want to start from scratch, and I don’t want to either bring a screen to it and troubleshoot what’s going on again. I tried in the past, and after a few hours of getting nothing (everything should be fine, it just doesn’t send or receive anything), I rolled it back and walked away. I have a feeling I just need to run yast and reconfigure there after updating, I just don’t want to go through the effort of fixing it because it still runs fine.
It’s actually easier than that, but I know what you mean. Yesterday I installed arch on a new laptop, after two years of NixOS. I think I might swich the desktop too.
For me, it felt like old times. Bringing up slackware, then bringing up redhat, then fighting in laptop Nvidia and AMD drivers. I was scary how much of my existing knowledge was useless though. If you install it by the book, you can’t even run a linked library.
I spent a couple of hundred hours learning how to configure it. I’ve been running it for around a year and a half. I’m still sub-par. First time around, 23.11, I installed home-manager as a flake. I got it up and running in a couple of hours, but managed to wedge myself when it was time for updates. I had written just enough weird nix language to make my configs not work in 24.05. I could get the OS to come up, but not home-manager. I started fresh, taking old configs item by item and re-implemented them via the docs fresh.
When I got a new laptop, I booted off the USB, copied my home folder and grabbed configuration.nix and home.nix and it all just magically worked.
That said, NGL, 25.05 has me a bit worried :) But at least I don’t have to fight Wayland this time.
That’s way, way more time and effort than I’m willing to waste on getting my computer up and running, and I still fail to see any real benefit over copying my Arch home folder and reinstalling what I need from Pacman/AUR. If I had to set up dozens of computers at a time then yes, absolutely, Nix would be perfect!
NixOS: How do I install OBS?
edit /etc/nixos/configuration.nix
locate environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
and add
Then you need to install the kernel driver
you can find the instructions here:
https://nixos.wiki/wiki/OBS_Studio
make sure you follow the part about boot.extraModulePackages = with config.boot.kernelPackages; [ v4l2loopback ];
if you want to use the virtual cam driver.
You may find out that you want to install this in home-manager or flakes instead, but those are novels themselves.
edit: ohh yeah almost forgot run
sudo nixos-rebuild switch
after you edit the configs to install
NixOS: How do I update the version of OBS after it’s installed?
sudo nix-channel --update
sudo nixos-rebuild switch
If it breaks, the errors are mostly unhelpful, you need to poke around and make educated guesses.
If it bricks you can go back to the previous version in grub by selecting the second to the top entry
make sure you garbage collect every now and then or the app store gets huge.
I’ve been using Linux for nearly 30 years and I recently noped out of NixOS. It’s a great concept, but I’m old and I don’t want to spend the rest of my days configuring stuff just to get to where I would be in 30 minutes on a less rigorously designed distro.
That is, until your distro releases an update and you’re like “what do you mean the update failed? So does that mean the update script rolled the changes back?” and then you find out your entire system is in a half updated state and you need to clean install
Is this one of those Arch things that I’m too immutable to relate to?
To be fair, with btrfs and whatever snapshot tool your distro has, you can make any distro just about impossible to fuck up.
I just keep my home folder backed up safely. The software installed doesn’t really matter to me since I can redownload things pretty quickly
Ever heard of btrfs snapshots and immutable?
Yes, that’s why I’d like to run something as clean as NixOS. For now my compromise is OpenSUSE Tumbleweed’s btrfs snapshots.
I’m in an interesting place because I installed tumbleweed as a server. At some point there was a change to networking and when I updated, networking didn’t work anymore, so I had to roll back to just before the update. I don’t want to start from scratch, and I don’t want to either bring a screen to it and troubleshoot what’s going on again. I tried in the past, and after a few hours of getting nothing (everything should be fine, it just doesn’t send or receive anything), I rolled it back and walked away. I have a feeling I just need to run yast and reconfigure there after updating, I just don’t want to go through the effort of fixing it because it still runs fine.
It’s actually easier than that, but I know what you mean. Yesterday I installed arch on a new laptop, after two years of NixOS. I think I might swich the desktop too.
Came here to say NixOS too. The idea behind it is neat but the implementation is the most obtuse Rube Goldberg machine I can imagine.
For me, it felt like old times. Bringing up slackware, then bringing up redhat, then fighting in laptop Nvidia and AMD drivers. I was scary how much of my existing knowledge was useless though. If you install it by the book, you can’t even run a linked library.
I spent a couple of hundred hours learning how to configure it. I’ve been running it for around a year and a half. I’m still sub-par. First time around, 23.11, I installed home-manager as a flake. I got it up and running in a couple of hours, but managed to wedge myself when it was time for updates. I had written just enough weird nix language to make my configs not work in 24.05. I could get the OS to come up, but not home-manager. I started fresh, taking old configs item by item and re-implemented them via the docs fresh.
When I got a new laptop, I booted off the USB, copied my home folder and grabbed configuration.nix and home.nix and it all just magically worked.
That said, NGL, 25.05 has me a bit worried :) But at least I don’t have to fight Wayland this time.
That’s way, way more time and effort than I’m willing to waste on getting my computer up and running, and I still fail to see any real benefit over copying my Arch home folder and reinstalling what I need from Pacman/AUR. If I had to set up dozens of computers at a time then yes, absolutely, Nix would be perfect!
that’s fair