For example, I’m using Debian, and I think we could learn a thing or two from Mint about how to make it “friendlier” for new users. I often see Mint recommended to new users, but rarely Debian, which has a goal to be “the universal operating system”.
I also think we could learn website design from… looks at notes …everyone else.
Debian is so hecking unstable for me omg… For some reason it just doesn’t play well with any hardware setup I’ve ever tried.
Anyways, I use arch Linux which could REALLY do with a nice wiki overhaul by now. It’s not beginner friendly AT ALL! Been using the same install for almost 3 years now I think, but man… When I have to figure out something, the wiki isn’t the first thing I’ll go anymore.
EDIT: Why the downvotes?
Downvote because i like the arch wiki very much and it was beginner friendly enough for me, tho (installed arch as a noob recently)
(Well I did not really downvote to be honest, but if I did, that would be the reason)
Hm, weird. I tried following to wiki to fix some Bluetooth issues I had. It didn’t fix my issue and on top of that it’s all over the place.
Man, I feel like some people treat the wiki as a hecking Bible omg…
If Debian fails in the same predictable way every time, for the same reason, it could be argued that it’s very stable, just not functional :) What kind of hardware do you use by the way?
It fails to run after a few days on several different laptops I’ve tried it on. Also on my main computer which is an amd 3900x with 64gb ram and a 3090. Arch however works perfectly fine, which is odd as heck
The Arch Linux wiki has been the best source for information for a long time for me. Many years ago the Gentoo wiki was good as well, till they lost all content and had to start from scratch.
I use Debian but still use the Arch wiki quite often. It’s a great resource. I improve Debian’s wiki where I can (eg I wrote a few sections on this page: https://wiki.debian.org/NFSServerSetup) but it’s just not the same.
[…] till they lost all content and had to start from scratch.
What happened? Now you got me curious
Let’s see. 15 years. Hosting company didn’t pay the bills. All gone. No backups.
That’s like saying you don’t get pyramids because they tip over so easily. It sounds like a you problem.
Probably the start menu back to what it should be. Back with distro windows xp.
Wait no nvm wrong community.
The universal operating system keeps dropping support for archs few people use… how universal, eh?
Fedora, NixOS and Void need a proper wiki like Arch
Most distros could also learn from Arch and create something similar to the AUR. Nix is going in the right direction.
And I guess almost all distros could learn from Artix and Devuan and reconsider if systemd is the right choice.
NixOS is at least starting to work on a new wiki. The old one is gone and is only accessible from archive.org.
Most distros could also learn from Arch and create something similar to the AUR.
i’ve seen Void’s xbps-src tool compared to the AUR multiple times in /r/voidlinux (and i guess it’s like a decentralized AUR?? you can build+install pkgs from source using the package manager, sure, but there’s no one big diy xbps packages registry like aur.archlinux.org for Void) and while i don’t really see it, if you follow that train of thought, void’s pretty set in the “right direction” :D
Seconded. NixOS’s documentation has consistently been the worst I’ve read, always forcing me to go to the source code to try and understand what in the world is happening. It makes quick changes to new things nigh impossible. I had to resort to taking notes when I understood things about nix in order to retain the knowledge or at least link to where I could easily regain it.
The nixos wiki was marginally better and https://nixlang.wiki/ has been better. However the latter is less known so has less content. All in all, nix documentation is still bad.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
NixOS has the best concept and even pioneered it, but whether its implementation and documentation is perfect is a topic for debate.
However, it’s been quite long since I had to fiddle with my config and as such, the downsides don’t really affect one on a daily basis. In fact, I recently reinstalled my machine to change the root filesystem and it was an absolute breeze. If not for secure boot, it would have been absolutely trivial, and with secure boot it was easy and convenient.
As such, I consider the pains an investment into system that runs much better down the road. Though I’d love it if these pains were reduced.
NixOS has the best concept AMD even pioneered it,
I’m assuming “AMD” is a typo?
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Give me immutable, declarative Arch.
What do you miss in NixOS (Unstable)?
I think a declarative, atomic LTS distro (e.g. Alma) would be quite nice for business use.
I gather that not everything is compatible with nixOS, and it’s better as a server than for development or as a general OS.
I didn’t know Alma was declarative.
Makes sense.
No, I wish for something like Alma, but declarative and atomic :)
I’ve been messing about with NixOS for the past 2 weeks or so. While I think I know enough to plug in the right text in the right spots to get a system configured I feel like I understand nothing about the nix language and the syntax is extremely unintuitive to me. If another distro offered declarative configuration as well as something like Nix’s options I would easily swap away from NixOS at this point.
I feel like I understand nothing about the nix language
Pure lazy unityped lambda calculus, basically a lazy lisp with records instead of lists. Or a pure, lazy, lua.
Pure is important because reproducibility, lazy is important to not have to evaluate all of nixpkgs before you can build anything, lambda calculus well it needs to be turing complete, support things like functions in in some way though TC is only used very, very very deep down in the system. They literally use the y-combinator to do recursion, like when bootstrapping stdenv.
The syntax is unintuitive, yes, but aside from the semicolon cancer actually not that bad. My biggest gripe with the language is it not having a proper type system, like you put a list where a string is expected or the other way around and you get five screenfuls of backtrace through the whole evaluation stack and due to laziness the actual location of the error might not even be in there.
I think that’s what BlendOS is working towards. You might keep an eye on them.
