I use Windows btw
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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To be honest, I don't think I ever left this phase ahaha. I've been using Linux for quite a while now, about 10ish years on and off (definitely more the "on" over the last 4 years) and I still find it really cool to switch distros whenever I find something that looks neat/different. Right now I'm trying out Fedora Kinoite (An "immutable" version of Fedora's KDE spin), but when the new "Orchid" release of Vanilla OS comes out I have a good feeling I'll be switching again to try that one out!
Well I think you're selling yourself short here (checkout imposter syndrome which is very common in the tech field), you could've certainly fooled me! You had a really solid explanation of pacman's arguments, and being able to explain them (rather than just memorizing "I use this combination in order to do X", if that makes sense) is part of what makes someone stand out as more of an intermediate level rather than a beginner level in my opinion!
Ah, the eternal distro hopping. I can relate. Frankly, I do think that Vanilla OS and even something like NixOS are genuinely exciting development in the world of Linux distributions. I'm unfamiliar with Fedora Kinoite, but skimming thorough its page, it looks really good! In general, I do like this side of things where Linux distributions tend to focus on being "universal" and "reliable", even if it means fundamentally pushing forward and away from the traditional this-distro-does-this-uniquely-and-manage-packages-like-this thing. I'm not super well versed in Vanilla OS but I did watch The Linux Experiment's video on it. I believe that it is immutable and installing packages through GNOME software defaults to the Flatpak format. Another thing is that you can create/launch containerised systems inside your OS, perhaps for developers or tinkerers who want to mess with different OSes.
NixOS on the other hand, well I think it's a package manager as well as a distro (?), and it basically builds packages in containers or in isolation of some sort. I do like this philosophy of containerising things to manage them by themselves individually (I think? sorta like Flatpak?), and NixOS also makes it immediately reproducible by its declarative system management. I think this sort of development is really good since it is a battle against the naturally occurring fragmentation in the Linux environment. Perhaps, there will be less "apt snap pacman yay zypper dnf yum emerge etc", since the method of having unique repos for each distro can be a bit annoying and time-consuming for the overall Linux and open-source ecosystem, though I think it's okay for the most part. Making the fundamental design and maintenance of the systems and packages modular is really great, since we'll have better hardware and software in the future. It is pretty exciting, for me at least.
Haha I'm flattered, thank you! I promise you I absolutely suck at all in these things, I just have some really minor interest in *-nix stuff. I'm not in the tech field (at least not right now), I'm just a postgraduate student studying solar cells. I used MX Linux for about a year during my final year of bachelor's degree, and right now I'm toying around with Arch. I'm that new kid interested in Linux, you know? I think in general I'm more interested in the free / open-source software (FOSS) world. Throughout several years, I played around with Ubuntu/Lubuntu, Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, Debian, even tried FreeBSD, and experimented just a tad bit with Alpine. Read about UNIX, GNU, Linux, FOSS stuff, and then OS, software, programming, web, technology stuff. Then I just have my own setup using almost entirely FOSS for personal use (mostly browsing, writing, learning programming, and some light retro gaming for leisure), and also for academic work (LaTeX, Zotero, Taguette, just a little bit of Python). I'm also using Vim. Again, I'm that excited kid, ya know? Anyway, I'm just a science student, but only now getting quite interested in Linux, computers and software in general. No experience in the tech field at all. Thank you though!
NixOS is really cool! I've actually tried it out a couple of times, and I find the premise of a completely reproducible system to be incredibly intriguing. In the time that I've tried it, I've found that it strays a bit too close to the "The way this system is designed is getting in the way of the things I want or need to do with my PC" - but it will up there on the distros to circle back to every now and then to see if things change.
You're correct that Nix is a few different things, it's a language (the Nix language), a package manager (Nix as a package manager), and then finally a distro as well (NixOS) - when running NixOS you get the benefits of all of them wrapped up in a convenient package so that your whole system can be managed in a declarative way (even down to your home folder / "dot files" if you use Home Manager - which technically also works outside of NixOS too).
Your knowledge of the FOSS world is stellar, even if you're not in the tech field - keep up the great work because I can tell you've got some wonderful adventures ahead of you!
I see, that's what Nix is! Interesting. Perhaps someday it can change and improve until it becomes a seriously viable distro for most people. It'll be a sight to see.
Hey thanks man, I appreciate it! Thanks for this conversation too! Hopefully we can have more conversations like this in the future. 😄