Specter

Gotcha 😄👍 and that’s probably the main thing these days. We might not be able to protect our data from these corps but we can at least move our money and attention away from them.

Man I don’t know if this is a parody but you’re inconveniencing yourself to an extreme that doesn’t make any sense especially when the EU is in negotiations to happily hand out all our biometric data to the US anyway.

I am all for privacy but let’s be honest it is a total sham nowadays. Go de-google to your hearts content, i did the same and I couldn’t be happier (you just get treated better when you’re not the product, funnily enough), just understand you’re not really protecting yourself from anything when governments can, and do, just negotiate your data behind your back anyway.

Love nixOS (my daily driver) but I wouldn’t call it obscure. It seems to be becoming as popular as Arch for people interested in experimental distros.

Meanwhile the US just bullied our governments into handing out all of our medical data and were obliged. Different approaches.

Proton and Tita aren’t entirely free either, 500MB is just 1-2 years of emails and after that you’ll start paying if you want to keep your mailbox.

Thank you for the thorough technical explanation, it is clear there are challenges for devs and I understand why the pushback exists now.

As an end user these are things I haven’t felt, are essentially invisible to me so I never felt the need to run away from systemd.

Thanks again.

I’m aware, I just don’t care enough about this particular beef.

Systems works well for me, and in order to get my configuration up to what it is today on NixOS (what I need it to be) I’d have to install multiple proprietary/non-free software/drivers on Guix anyway.

In a roundabout way I’d end up in the same spot.

It’s not really mandatory, but I take your point.

I guess it’s the choice between many minor programs running in tandem, potentially only held together by a few maintainers, or an init system that unifies all those programs under one flag, with multiple maintainers including corporations, but the chance for it to get enshittified.

I personally have no choice of init system since I use NixOS. But I also don’t necessarily think the death of the personal computer will come from an init system, it will sooner come from hardware becoming unavailable/too expensive for individuals to buy (basically what we are seeing happen now).

Okay, other than “I believe it’s against the Unix Philosophy” and “hypothetically it will become bloated”, is there anything else worth knowing?

I should have clarified that the list above only makes sense if you just want your machine to work because atomic distros aren’t great to tinker with (except NixOS), but let’s face it, moist people are not tinkerers do what they need is exactly what atomic distros offer.

I used to be upset about this phenomenon until I realized Social Media is full:

• people who can’t see one palm in front of them
• literal children whose parents are scrolling videos for them to watch.

All due to screen addiction. So while it is tempting to reduce everything to bots, trolls, or mustache-twirling villains who won’t let us have nice things, the reality is we humans too tend to misclick things. 😶‍🌫️

I don’t get it, what about the gitignore reveals he’s vibecoding?

That’s a round about way of saying RTFM, but even less welcoming. Probably not the kind of thing anyone should be told…

Not to mention they look dogshit on GNOME. Fonts look so blue try you’re better off gauging your eyes out, it’s less painful.

Uh… is the NixOS documentation “one of the best around” or have you never checked it? It really can’t be both.

Understand, I’m not trying to criticize NixOS. I use NixOS exclusively and it’s my daily driver. But the documentation really isn’t all there, and it’s not centralized. The best solutions you find across forums, blog posts, random wikis, and by checking other people’s configs like you said.

But yes, the fact you can test things without fear of breaking your system allows you to make hundreds of mistakes stress-free. That’s one of the best features about NixOS.

I am talking from experience here. Some of the documentation is out of date, some is meant for Channel NixOS installs and not so appropriate for Flake-based installs.

Most of the fixes for my issues I find across NixOS discourse forum posts, or in the subreddit of the other platform. The Wiki/official documentation is not enough.

I’m glad you switched to NixOS (welcome!) but this is gap in documentation is something that will become more apparent over time. The NixOS official wiki ironically often links to Arch wiki to explain certain concepts further.

I like this. I think paying people to develop FOSS is fine, we’re also all better off for it.

Not to mention, RTfM is not always possible for some distros like NixOS where the documentation is weaker than for other more mainstream distros.

I was gonna say the same thing.

For most beginners who just want their PC to work, the obvious choice should be Mint for older hardware, and Universal Blue’s Fedora-based images (Bluefin or Aurora depending on the preferred desktop).

Of course, since OP mentioned NixOS that is an option as well. But it should be the stable version, and it is not beginner friendly like the other two.