Re:Nix – Death by a Thousand Cuts
by choobacker on Wednesday January 15, 2025 @07:23PM
(#42719252)
Yes, the ergonomics are poor. I endure them for the results, but the ergonomics should be better.
Guix has better ergonomics, but it's own set of downsides.
I expect the underlying idea of holistic declarative systems is sound, and we're awaiting a polished alternative. Maybe it'll reuse nixpkgs under the hood , but replace the name, the tooling, and the language exposed to the user.
I honestly wish PKGBUILD would get a shout at some point in the world of "Not the worst way to describe a package"
Re:Nix – Death by a Thousand Cuts
by mrbluecoat on Thursday January 16, 2025 @09:22PM
(#42733397)
Yeah, cloud installation is a bit tricky: https://mrbluecoat.blogspot.com/2024/12/nixos-in-cloud.html
https://netboot.xyz/ is probably the easiest way if your cloud provider supports it.
I spent quite a while trying to understand what Nix was actually trying to accomplish and how one would actually go about using it. Granted I was trying to do it on a Chromebook, but the idea stands: I should be able to get at least the nix environment set up and the silly gnu hello world built and running, right?
Turns out nah. The ergonomics are just that of a hiltless double bladed sword.
I'm glad I'm not the only one, but i also was aware of pushcx trying years ago and still failing [1] and he's a smart dude unlike me. I didn't feel so dumb.
[1] https://push.cx/nixos