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Comment by the__alchemist | Hacker News Reader

I've been patiently trying a distro of Linux every other year for the past 20... Someday. The general trend: Things work well from a native install. When you start installing software and drivers, the OS gets totalled, sooner or later.

> What's worse is that software compiled for the current version of Linux X will not necessarily work for the current version of Linux Y. Linux distros insist that all the software must be compiled for their current releases or provided as source code. The problem with source code is that normal users won't bother to compile anything, and secondly, it's not always possible to compile software because it may depend on a specific compiler or dependencies that your distro doesn't provide

This is at the core of it, I think. Forcing a user to compile C code is a bad user experience; it often fails due to linking or other dependency-related errors.

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> When you start installing software and drivers, the OS gets totalled

I have been using multiple Linux distros for over 20 years (and supporting other people) and this has simply never happened to me. Not even since I started using a distro that is supposedly less stable (Manjaro).

> Forcing a user to compile C code is a bad user experience

That is why very few distros expect users to do it. Are you thinking of Gentoo or similar? I think its good that there are distros that cater for people who want to compile software, but why choose one of those distros unless you actually want to compile software?

From the point of view of most users, Linux is very similar to iOS or Android - you install software from the "store".

> From the point of view of most users, Linux is very similar to iOS or Android - you install software from the "store".

I believe the comment you're replying to is stating that Linux (and its app ecosystem) is much more fragmented than iOS and Android. Each distro has a "store" of apps that only reliably work on that distro.

Unless the "store" is GNOME Software, which as far as I can tell doesn't work reliably on any distro.

That made me laugh.

I knew rms at Berkeley, when he was still (considered) cool.

It's a "distribution" of software. People taking care to make a number of programs works together well enough on top of the kernel in order for you to use your hardware. But the build scripts for one works well enough if you're trying to use a less common distro (I shamelessly copied from Debian and Arch for a few software on Alpine).

> supposedly less stable (Manjaro).

It's not supposedly, a "rolling distro" can't be stable because it has no stable ABI (upgrading a few dependencies is enough to change the ABI exposed to applications).

When your compiled binaries work one moment and then don't work after a system update, that's considered unstable and is one of the reasons people pay Red Hat to support old Linux versions for 20 years.

Some people think "stability" means crashes when it comes to distros, it does not.

I think stable means both. I actually meant it in the second sense - Manjaro is significantly more likely to go wrong in ways that require fixing.

I should have used a less ambiguous term in this context though.

I’ve been using Linux on the same timeline starting with RHEL3, then Gentoo, Ubuntu, and finally ArchLinux and I’ve had to arch-chroot from a live usb several times over the last five years to fix broken upgrades*. It hasn’t been more than an hour detour each time but it’s been far from painless. I just recently had to nuke and pave a Thinkpad X1 extreme to reset KDE/Plasma to a configuration that didn’t crash Plasma randomly or kernel panic when resuming from sleep (power management was especially bad for that old gen1 model until recently and I had to build a custom thermald or something). I’ve still got a problem with a monitor not working after power save - just monitor off, not even computer sleep - until I power cycle it. Some problems are even starting to crop up on my System76 Pangolin.

A significant fraction of the software I use is installed through yay’s extra packages which do frequently require building from source so it’s not just a Gentoo thing. It’s far from as seamless (or as limited) as Android/iOS app stores.

* and not even half of them can be blamed on NVIDIA

Arch is not for consumers, Arch is for people who think they are "power users" or something like that.

> A significant fraction of the software I use is installed through yay’s extra packages which do frequently require building from source so it’s not just a Gentoo thing.

Which is why I said "or similar". I actually had AUR in mind (as I use Manjaro).

Could you give examples for what bricked your system when you "start installing software and drivers" or when you were forced to compile C code as a user? Because this all sound so alien to me, I've been using Linux for over 20 years and everything has gotten so much smoother over the years that all this criticism feels completely ignorant to me.

Linux user here: there was an issue with systemd that could brick your system if you RM -rf / ... It would also delete your uefi volume....

> When you start installing software and drivers, the OS gets totalled, sooner or later.

My experience with Windows, exactly.

I used to run Ubuntu in a VM years before switching to installing a Linux distribution on my PC and the constant distro upgrades got on my nerves.

The way I started was by installing Arch Linux on a 32GB flash drive. No I did not write the ISO onto the flash drive. I used Virtualbox to load the arch Linux iso and mounted the flash drive into Virtualbox and installed onto the flash drive as if it was a regular HDD/SSD. The only annoyance was figuring out the bootloader for this particularly exotic way of installing Arch Linux.

After that I spent most of my time really just doing everything in a web browser for several months. I did this, because I wanted to have a less distracting computing environment where almost nothing was installed. The fact that games didn't run on Linux was supposed to be a feature, until I realized that they mostly run on Linux anyway. Then I bought a 512GB SSD and installed Arch Linux on it in 2018 and never even thought or cared about what Linux distribution I am using ever since.

But you don't install software and drivers on Linux, you edit your nix flake, switch and it always works. If it doesn't work up to your liking, you boot into the previous generation.

Also for some mysterious reasons, compiling C code under Nix always works and dependencies can't be missing.

NixOS is certainly the most obvious design paradigm with the most confusing integration / implementation I've ever seen.

It feels a bit like "Emacs is my favorite operating system, if only it had a text editor"

NixOS's philosophy? amazing. Actually trying to use, install stuff to, make changes to, etc. NixOS with the currently existing tools? horrible.

The benefits outweight the issues.

Sure, if I want to spend weeks and months of time learning how to:

  * move my arms again, so I can learn how to
  * push myself up again, so I can learn how to
  * move my legs again, so I can learn how to
  * crawl, so I can learn how to
  * walk.

Cost of entry is a very real issue with NixOS and many/most of us are not interested in taking that time, so until it's easy / reasonable to use for most people's lived experiences, it'll sit on the backburner of Linux installations.

In my case I managed to get working desktop in about 15 minutes without any prior Nix knowledge just by following their tutorial, then about 16 hours to read/learn/experiment and 8 more hours to complete my environment and 8 more to move my homelab to Nix. Since then I spend around two hours every six months to update and polish my flakes.

Although Nix knowledge helped me tremendously in managing heterogenous codebase with more than a million of LoC

That doesn’t sound like something the average computer user would be able or willing to do.

There are plenty of options which would do for that average user.

This subthread started with “When you start installing software and drivers, the OS gets totalled, sooner or later.” Then came the objection that one wouldn’t do that with Nix. Then that yeah, but Nix is too difficult to use. Then that no, it isn’t that difficult after you spend a weekend or two learning it. Which isn’t for the average user. Now you say there are plenty of other options, presumably non-Nix. I feel we are back to where this subthread started.

There was no "average user" constraint specified. Works on my desktop.

"Works on my desktop" is about the most useless thing you can say when comparing good and bad experiences that different people might have.

For you, perhaps, but not for me.

In my experience, Nix makes some things very easy and other things very, very difficult.

I hope the situation has improved, but the last time I had to deal with Nvidia (kernel/driver/library dependencies/updates/etc.) under Nix it did not remotely work out of the box and it was a huge pain. (And switching to AMD or intel was not really an option.) Doing anything off the beaten path seems to be challenging even if you have experience with Nix.

The arcane Nix language doesn't help matters.

I think immutable is the future, and I wish I could recommend Nix (and other immutable systems) to normal people, but at this point I think you really need to be a Nix expert/fan to set it up and actually enjoy it.

In my experience, Nvidia drivers only work well under Nix, because their native installer loves to mess stateful systems.

Running a .run to install the nvidia drivers is a very bad idea if your distro packages them, especially on NixOS (does it even work?)

> does it even work

Described my windows experience. Except that windows insistently tries to convince you to make an account and has a very startmenu behavior.

I have been running Fedora as a daily driver for two years now. It’s even the Sway spin so it’s not the happy path. No issues at all. Been through at least one major version upgrade with zero issues. Maybe even two. It’s a total non-issue.

> This is at the core of it, I think. Forcing a user to compile C code is a bad user experience; it often fails due to linking or other dependency-related errors.

Huh? If you’re compiling your own code in a mainstream Linux distribution then I’m not surprised you have to nuke and pave.

It’s a distribution, meaning they build and distribute the software for you.

Flatpak deals with all the applications that don’t need to be built into the operating system itself.

Don’t install things outside the package manager. If you must install software yourself, install it to /usr/local.

> Forcing a user to compile C code is a bad user experience; it often fails due to linking or other dependency-related errors.

I've had no failures building major projects like CPython (multiple versions) as long as I RTFM and ensure that clearly identified build dependencies are installed first.

Why in the world would you need to "compile C code"?

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