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Comment by Alan_Dillman | Hacker News Reader

Yeah its funny how experiences differ.

I was at my parents,and wanted to sketch out something for my dad. So I grabbed my mom's win10 laptop, went to the blender download location, downloaded, double clicked, got a popup about updates. Whatever, not my computer, not my problem. double click again. Again with the popup. Read it carefully this time. WTF? I NEED to update their store to install a third party package?

Not my computer, not my mandate.

It looked like I could install the stores' version, but of course, its not up to date. Then some more bullshit about updating.

I shut it down and went for paper and pencil.

Yeah. I know. You don't want to SUDO this or SUDO that. But I want a operating system that does what I tell it to do.

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I would really like to have an OS that quietly keeps itself up to date without bugging me about it. My work Macbook and Windows laptops also bug me a lot and keep demanding reboots at inconvenient times, with popup notifications blocking things I need.

Just quietly download your updates, install them in the background, and quickly switch to the new version at some point when I'm not using it.

That's exactly what ChromeOS does. Quick reboot (a few seconds) and it's done.

NixOS has this feature, though you will have to rewrite parts of your configuration if you're using bleeding edge/nonstandard stuff.

I run automatic updates nightly, sometimes when I get back to the machine it's in init waiting for me to input my ZFS password.

NixOS is the last system you install, which is really nice. It's the Linux dist I've run the longest consecutive at home.

I'm on Arch now, but definitely have Nixos on my radar to try out some day. Looks like a fairly steep learning curve though (as was Arch, really).

If I were to install a Linux distro for my father again I would probably use NixOS, because he won't be installing packages, and then just maintaining the config file, automatic upgrades and killing older generations just works. Staying with stable and possibly having to patch the config sligtly (to fix upgrades) every 6m.

The learning curve is higher once you wanna start building software that isn't packaged already, that's when you'll have to learn to write nix expressions.

I've been planning to package FRRouting for NixOS, It'd be the perfect OS for a router, atomic forward and backwards rolls. (Except for user data, but that could be solved with ZFS snapshots, NixOS makes it VERY easy to use ZOL).

Nix is super unique, you can set up your own Hydra (the Nix build bot), run your own package cache, fork and maintain your own stuff. It's really more like working with code than maintaining a system.

Another great thing is that with Nix, once a problem is solved once, It's solved forever (Since literally everything defining your system is under version control).

I love it, but i wish to learn the Nix language proper and contribute back.

That is pretty much what Windows 10 does. Okay, maybe not quickly switch to the new version as we all know that it can take 10 - 20 minutes sometimes, but here is the thing. By default it reboots and install the updates when I sleep so I don't notice this. It always puzzles me when I hear that Windows suddenly starts to install updated while you are doing something, because that is not the default. The default is to install and reboot outside of your normal working hours. Best guess is that many people turn off their computer when they don't use it. In that case it is only possible to install the updates while you use that machine.

> Best guess is that many people turn off their computer when they don't use it

If the update is fully downloaded, you have the option to "install & shutdown"

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