Nix! Just being able to run nix-env -i git and get a newer, isolated, git installation on an older Debian is very nice. Makes it easy to remove.
I can also do nix-shell -p <application I want to try out> if I want to test stuff out.
I’ve been able to ignore the Nix language pretty well so far, so no incredibly steep learning curve quite yet. Nix OS is still too spoopy for me.
Adding a terminal multiplexer. Now I understand why UNIX is an IDE.
Booting directly from UKI signed by my Secure Boot keys.
Switched to an immutable system after I finally managed to wrap my head around the concept.
I’ve tried it before but left frustrated cause my normal workflow doesn’t apply anymore.
But if you’re looking for an OS that basically disappears in the background, it’s great. I even removed the terminal cause I have no use for it on my laptop.
Can you explain the idea and advantages? Excluding use cases like setting up a laptop for your grandma.
Generally I use my computer to launch programs that do the stuff I want to do, or edit my files.
My files are in /home and programs for the tasks I need are available as flatpaks.
So I don’t need to rummage around in the rest of the file system. You could call it “a laptop for grandma” except I’m not that old. I use my laptop for office stuff, gaming, photo editing, streaming music and video, browsing, mail, messaging, ssh’ing into my servers, etc. What I don’t use it for anymore is tinkering with my OS. I’m fine with default Gnome and I don’t need to adjust every little thing, I can just adjust myself a bit to how the GUI works.
I just don’t want to read Arch news before I update weekly, set apt-pinning priorities to disable snap, deal with recommended dependencies, meta packages, mirrorlists, third-party repo urls, gpg keyfiles, file permissions, executable flags, systemd services, and all that jazz anymore.
Hey, that’s why I wanted an explanation! The one I got an a search result made it seem like you can’t install anything.
I reinstalled from scratch. Went from Xubuntu to minimal Ubuntu with KDE de. And then tried wayland again. One the one hand, gaming performance went up by a lot which was basically my main issue.
On the other side it is buggy af. The file manager fails mostly at moving files. There are random graphical glitches. Had the whole DE crash/lock up a couple times And the tabbing/tasbar handling is (still) not what I want. I also have still not found out why zfs automount does not trigger.
But at least I have something useable again!
On the other side [Wayland] is buggy af.
I’ve been having the exact opposite problem since recently coming back to Linux after a long hiatus. For me, Wayland has been flawless, while anything x11 looks like somebody ran the screen through a shredder, discarded half the strips, and smooshed the rest back together.
I don’t know how to troubleshoot that. I don’t even know what to type in a search engine to get relevant results.
