this post was submitted on 14 May 2023
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What's that one feature you liked so much while distrohopping that you want it by default in all distros? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago by Owell1984@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I have always been discovering new things about Linux distros while distro hopping. And when I get something I really like, I just copy the package name and make sure I install it in every distro I use in the future.

Let me start:

  1. Clipboard manager (Gpaste)
  2. KDE connect
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[–] lhotze@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Everything NixOS (https://nixos.org) does. I am 99% sure that if anyone tries it out and gets comfortable with it they will never change again.

  • Your configuration is written in code, it is therefore persistent. Do you know that annoying feeling of "oh shit, how did I configure x program that I want to install on this other machine"? Never again.
  • You can wipe your machine and recover your config in no time. I have 3 machines working with the same config except for small variations. If I change the command to take a screenshot it changes in all of them. If I change my firefox bookmarks it is persisted accross them too. Its awesome.
  • NixOS generates revisions of your config automatically. Ifyou change something and it breaks you can always use a previous version of your system that you know works to fix it.
  • The Nix package repository is the largest (by far) in all the linux ecosystem. And, even if a package you want is missing, adding it yourself is not that hard.

I am probably missing other nice things, but those are awesome already. It's true that the learning curve it a bit steeper than usual, but there is no distro quite like it and even for non coders you can get a lot out of it.

[–] yaru 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Nix has been on my mind for a while, but I've been hesitant to go all in. Unfortunately, messing around a bit with VMs I still don't feel like I have a good handle on how it all works.

One question I'd ask you is how much upfront work it is to get, say, a stable setup for a laptop where all of the little things are working (opening/closing the lid, connecting to external screen, switching audio outputs, media keys. Laptop stuff!)

As context, a long time ago I ran Gentoo and later Arch, so I'm not technically clueless, but eventually decided to switch to easier distros that came with a reasonable system defaults that works out of the box. I'm super interested in NixOS for all the reasons you mentioned, but worried about how time I'll end up spending just getting that config file to where I want it!

[–] lhotze@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The stable setup on the laptop you can get by using a DE like Gnome that comes with batteries included. If you go for more minimal setups like a window manager it will take quite a bit longer. NixOS as a distribution is pretty easy to get running, if you are familiar with the desktop environment that you install in your system getting it setup is much much simpler than doing so in other distros like Arch, since it usually consists of adding a line like desktopEnvironment.gnome.enable = true to your config and the system takes care of almost everything. I even think that gnome gets installed by default on the first run.

[–] yaru 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks! I ended up messing with Nixos a bunch in the past few weeks. My impression is generally positive, though while many of the things it does are very elegant (like the gnome example you mentioned), a lot of it also seems a bit hacky. Ultimately, figuring out how to declaratively configure specific things seems to take so much more time than my current approach of a written document detailing the steps of setting up my system.

I'm going to keep tinkering in a VM though, and maybe I'll have a breakthrough. Keeping configs working across two computers especially is tempting (read: an excuse to get a second computer).

One last question - one of the things I worked on was Firefox with home manager. How did you get it set up so bookmarks were included in the config?

[–] lhotze@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

When you set a FF profile there is a key called bookmarks. You can set them there:

programs.firefox = {
  enable = true;
  extensions = [
    pkgs.nur.repos.rycee.firefox-addons.vimium
    ...
  ];
  profiles = {
    my-profile = {
      name = "yourname";
      settings = {};
      bookmarks = [
         {
           name = "This is a folder";
           toolbar = true;
           bookmarks = [
             {
               name = "You can nest folders";
               bookmarks = [
                 {
                   name = "This is a lemmy bookmark";
                   keyword = "lemmy";
                   url = "https://lemmy.ml/";
                 }
            ...
        ];
      ];
    };
  };
};

You can always look at the home manager reference, I usually look here.

[–] Owell1984@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

undefined> Your configuration is written in code, it is therefore persistent. Do you know that annoying feeling of “oh shit, how did I configure x program that I want to install on this other machine”? Never again.

This is sick! thank you!

[–] Zach777@fosstodon.org 1 points 2 years ago

@lhotze @Owell1984 This singlehandedly makes me want to switch off Ubuntu.

[–] Tiuku@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's quite reasonable to switch to Guix, as it too is "a functional distro".

[–] Laser@feddit.de 1 points 2 years ago

I recently tried NixOS and was considering Guix as well, however what made me decide on NixOS was the fact that it doesn't restrict you to free packages by the distro default choice.

Does Guix have an equivalent to flakes or does it even need one? I never looked closer into the design.