this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (6 children)

It’s finally ready for mass adoption, IMO. Also, things take a long time to catch on and now that flakes are fairly stable and a lot of pedagogy is popping up in the form of other people’s configs (and the documentation is being actively improved to hopefully someday meet the high standards of Arch), people feel empowered to try it out.

IOG uses it for their entire stack which is packed with incredibly solid (IMO) software engineering decisions from top to bottom.

I tried it because I wanted to run a Cardano stake pool and develop DApps for the Cardano ecosystem. Their build-from-source instructions made me realize how much better it would be to install it with Nix instead of the cargo cult/curse of the current era, a Docker container.

[–] Feathercrown 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

and the documentation is being actively improved to hopefully someday meet the high standards of Arch

It has a LONG way to go

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Totally agreed. That’s a big ask, though, because Arch’s docs are the gold standard.

I’m working on converting to impermanence mode this week and let’s just say I’d be done by now if the answers were even close to the quality found in Arch’s wiki.

[–] JustAnotherKay 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This is the one thing stopping from swapping to Nix. I would love to have a drop in file for my mini PC, but right now staying in the arch ecosystem is just easier

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Don’t worry. NixOS users are spiritual brothers to Arch users, IMO, and we’ll eventually get to the point where it’ll be easier with canonical examples. 🤝

In the meantime, try out the nix package manager while still using Arch to build a package here or there if you’re so inclined.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, I think the network effect is a big part of it. People start seeing nix configs being used for projects, and nixos config examples are getting easier to find.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Input Output Global

They’re the company that created Cardano. They’re well-respected for their code quality and the use of formal methods and academic peer review to develop their software. They started out an enemy of most Haskell devs then won many over with their massive open source contributions to the Haskell developer experience. Their Nix based Haskell dev environment is THE best way to use Haskell with Nix.

They used to be called IOHK or Input Output Hong Kong which is still reflected on their GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It’s finally ready for mass adoption, IMO

No way. It's still a specialist OS. There's no way I'm putting this into the hands of a linux newbie or even the average linux user. There config still doesn't have a UI, the flakes vs non-flakes debate is still in full swing (nixpkgs doesn't have flakes), the doc is far, far, far from user friendly, writing a nix package is still not easy, and so much more.

Nix for sure was (and probably is) ahead of its time, but the UX is amongst the worst I've experienced - and I've written init and upstart services and configured my network with ipconfig before networkmanager was stable.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] Zangoose 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Mass adoption doesn't necessarily mean Linux newbie. NixOS seems to be targeting the DevOps crowd with its stability/immutability -- that is, people who would be comfortable building their system from a config file that doesn't have a UI. They're already basically doing that with other tools.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I don't know a single devops who uses it. Not a single person in the tech companies I've been in had even heard of it. When I presented it to resolve problems it could resolve, one response was "but I watched a video that said it's hard to learn" (one from distrotube, I think) and another was "it doesn't work on mac, does it?" and that was that.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I find it actually incredible that you don’t know anyone in DEVOPS that uses it. Either you’re at a giant company with a custom stack that replicates its functionality (Meta employees that I asked didn’t know about it) or you don’t talk to other devs. It’s like THE devops tool nowadays (only taking a second place to Docker/OCI).

It does, in fact, work on Mac, FreeBSD, Windows, and actually almost anywhere that SSH can be run.

This comment has a closed source license.

[–] Feathercrown 5 points 3 weeks ago

“it doesn’t work on mac, does it?”

How is this person even in devops lol

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

🙄

Did you just post a license for your humblebrag soapbox rant about NixOS?

Edit: I’ll leave some points where I agree since you’re very fixated on/preoccupied with who won this debate (or something). In the long run, most Nix users are wishing for a complete rewrite of NixOS with Nix’s modern approach codified as standard. After all, to your point, Nix is just a massive pile of Perl and Bash under the hood. It could unquestionably be more capable if they had the benefit of hindsight (or a proper type system built into the language) like GUIX which uses Scheme as their DSL has. AFAIK, though, Nix flakes are a feature that GUIX badly needs.


For GUIX: Does anyone know about content-addressed derivations in GUIX? I figure that might also be a place where Nix bests GUIX but perhaps some GUIX(pronounced geeks) can correct me before I search for answers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

They actually believe AI scraping lemmy will follow the link to the license, understand it, and except their comment.

[–] grue 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't think they believe that; I think they either (a) think a human lawyer would understand it during the class-action suit after the the AI scrapes it anyway, or (b) more likely, they're doing it to make a point as a matter of principle.

Either seems pretty fucking reasonable, to be honest!

[–] barsquid 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's just noise. Assuming US jurisdiction where many of the AI companies are based; either AI scraping is fair use, in which case the license is meaningless, or AI scraping is not fair use, in which case they already have the copyright.

[–] grue 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

or AI scraping is not fair use, in which case they already have the copyright.

What? How would an AI company have copyright over @[email protected]'s comment? That makes no sense at all.

[–] barsquid 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's the other way around, onlinepersona already has the copyright. Asserting that the copyright is non-commercial changes nothing. The default is non-commercial. The default is nobody can use it. They are applying a more permissive copyright than the default.

[–] grue 1 points 3 weeks ago

Ah, I see what you mean now.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

a lot of the art and science of teaching is popping up?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Tutorials and teaching materials

for those with a limited vocabulary and an unwavering need to correct someone that isn’t necessarily wrong.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I have never seen pedagogy used to mean teaching materials.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

Well, now you have.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Hi, teacher here: pedagogy is 'the method and practice of teaching', and that practice involves teaching materials.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 weeks ago

still seems wierd to me. materials do not sound like practice at all and I guess method as they are written often but like I feel like pencils are materials. just feels wierd based on the definition.