this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
139 points (97.3% liked)

Linux

48003 readers
1032 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
nooter692@lemmy.ml
MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
139
I switched from Nixos to void Linux. Here's my experience so far. (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by 7ai@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml
73 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I hopped from arch (2010-2019) to Nixos (2019-2023). I had my issues with it but being a functional programmer, I really liked the declarative style of configuring your OS. That was until last week. I decided to try out void Linux (musl). I'm happy with it so far.

Why did I switch?

  1. Nix is extremely slow and data intensive (compared to xbps). I mean sometimes 100-1000x or more. I know it is not a fair comparison because nix is doing much more. Even for small tweaks or dependency / toolchain update it'll download/rebuild all packages. This would mean 3-10GB (or more) download on Nixos for something that is a few KB or MB on xbps.

  2. Everything is noticeably slower. My system used way more CPU and Ram even during idle. CPU was at 1-3% during idle and my battery life was 2 to 3.5h. Xfce idle ram usage was 1.5 GB on Nixos. On Void it's around 0.5GB. I easily get 5-7h of battery life for my normal usage. It is 10h-12h if I am reading an ebook.

Nix disables a lot of compiler optimisations apparently for reproducibility. Maybe this is the reason?

  1. Just a lot of random bugs. Firefox would sometimes leak memory and hang. I have only 8 GB of ram. WiFi reconnecting all the time randomly. No such issues so far with void.

  2. Of course the abstractions and the language have a learning curve. It's harder for a beginner to package or do something which is not already exposed as an option. (This wasn't a big issue for me most of the time.)

For now, I'll enjoy the speed and simplicity of void. It has less packages compared to nix but I have flatpak if needed. So far, I had to install only Android studio with it.

My verdict is to use Nixos for servers and shared dev environments. For desktop it's probably not suitable for most.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Euphoma@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago (10 children)

In my experience, doing small changes to your nix config when using nix flakes seems to be faster. For me it only rebuilds everything when I run nix flake update before running sudo nixos-rebuild switch so it seems faster because it only does the thing that I changed instead of updating everything.

[–] lloram239@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Also this in your configure.nix:

  nix.registry = {
    nixpkgs = {
      from = {
        type = "indirect";
        id = "nixpkgs";
      };
      to = {
        type = "path";
        path = inputs.nixpkgs.outPath;
      };
    };
  };

This will create an entry in the nix registry pointing to your currently installed version and stop nix search from constantly updating the package list.

[–] Lalelul@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are there any tradeoffs I need to accept to use this?

[–] lloram239@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, it just makes the nix command use the same nixpkgs repository your system is already using. Without it nix will constantly redownload the latest nixpkgs-unstable which is very slow. You will get slightly older software when you do something like nix run nixpkgs#blender ("old" here meaning the same version as if you had it installed on your current system), but if you just want to try something out, you probably care more about it being fast than the latest version.

And if you care about lastest stuff you'll can just make yourself a nixpkgs-unstable registry entry with:

nix registry add flake:unstable github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable

and than do:

nix run nixpkgs-unstable#blender

Updating your OS isn't impacted by any of this at all, as that happens via the /etc/nixos/flake.lock file as before.

PS: This assumes you are using flakes and the new nix command, both of which are still marked as experiment and not enabled the default.

[–] Lalelul@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks a lot. I will give it a try. By the way, are you also using the NUR? Do you maybe know if I can configure the nix.registry to allow using NUR packages using nix shell as well?

[–] lloram239@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Good question. NUR doesn't seem to output the packages directly, but requires that you supply your pkgs manually. You can use nix shell with NUR, but it gets rather ugly:

nix shell --impure --expr '(import (builtins.getFlake github:nix-community/NUR) { pkgs = (import  {}).pkgs; }).repos.mic92.hello-nur'

nix registry doesn't help here, as it's just for managing aliases that allow you to type "nixpkgs" instead of "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-23.05" in some places.

It might be possible to write a flake that outputs NUR packages for direct use, e.g. something like:

{
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-23.05";
    flake-utils.url = "github:numtide/flake-utils";
    nur_src.url = "github:nix-community/NUR";
  };

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, flake-utils, nur_src }:
    flake-utils.lib.eachDefaultSystem (system:
      let
        pkgs = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.${system};
        nurpkgs = import "${nur_src}/default.nix" { pkgs = pkgs; nurpkgs = pkgs; };
      in {
        packages = nurpkgs.repos.mic92; // FIXME: this needs more work and filtering
      }
    );
}

Which gives:

$ nix --allow-import-from-derivation flake show .
git+file:///
└───packages
    ├───aarch64-darwin
    │   ├───bing-image-creator: package 'python3.10-bing-image-creator-0.4.4'
    │   ├───clearsans: package 'clearsans-1.00'
    │   ├───cntr: package 'cntr-1.5.1'
    │   ├───conky-symbols: package 'ConkySymbols'
    │   ├───eapol_test: package 'eapol_test-2.10'
    │   ├───edge-gpt: package 'python3.10-edge-gpt-0.13.1'
    │   ├───fira-code-pro-nerdfonts: package 'nerdfonts-3.0.1'
    │   ├───gatttool: package 'bluez-5.66'
    │   ├───gdb-dashboard: package 'gdb-dashboard-0.11.4'

But needs some more work and might be reinventing the wheel. Haven't used NUR myself and no idea what the state of flakes in NUR is.

[–] fugi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Not really, but you should update your flake every once in a while to get the latest packages

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)