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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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submitted 1 week ago by nobody_1677@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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[–] nobody_1677@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (19 children)

Not sure how I feel about this "distroless" pattern. It's interesting to be able to get components directly from upstreams from like Gnome, but it makes certain tasks more difficult.

The lack of any distro packages to fall back on when flatpak, distrobox, appimages, and brew fails is simply annoying. I've experienced this multiple times.

When I would flash OSes on my Pixel, I couldn't use flatpak/distrobox/brew. I would either have to (1) overlay a browser and ADB tools, (2) overlay ADB and maybe use an Appimage browser, or (3) boot into a traditional distro like Debian that has an unrestricted browser. Distroless has no recourse for me here.
Using sshfs: installing sshfs from brew or distrobox would not work without host configuration changes made by overlaying sshfs. Distroless has no distro package to fall back on
Using tailscale: tailscale from brew didn't work. Had to fall back on distro package. Distroless would fail me here, but in this case, I believe Jorge preinstalls it. So simply adopt all of Jorge's tastes and applications and you'll be fine...
No upstream Steam support since there's no rpmfusion or official valve package to use, you'd have to use something like the unoffical Steam flatpak

While I love Fedora Atomic and atomic distros in general, I constantly feel like they do not think things through. They made the system harder to break, but with severely limited (if you use them the way you're encouraged to, like no layering). They then address these gaps one by one with more and more solutions that are imperfect and that do not fit all needs.

Flatpak is good for GUI apps, but not CLI.
Brew is good for CLI stuff, but does funky PATH things that could break host OS at times (and as mentioned, did not work for sshfs or tailscale for me). KDE Linux initially promoted Brew, but then later recommended not using it at all due to its PATH shenanigans
Distrobox is good if you need distro packages, but the containerization has limitations with desktop integration and more complex tasks, like I mentioned with flashing OSes on my Pixel.

At least with Fedora Atomic (and containerfiles with bootc stuff), I can get a robust system, seamless OS upgrades, and install any packages that do not work well as flatpaks/distrobox/appimages.

[–] brnaftreadn@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’ve never tried these “distroless” systems before. Curious about these setups. Have you tried nix pkg manager in place of brew?

[–] nobody_1677@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I've used NixOS, wasn't that big of a fan. I certainly love the idea, but not the execution. Fedora Atomic just comes out of the box as a more complete, configured system that's easier to understand.

I have been meaning to use Nix on Atomic, but the problem is that since / is immutable, Nix cannot create /nix and so doesn't work properly. But there are workarounds for that issue, I just haven't tried them yet.

Nix certainly fixes the PATH issues of homebrew since it has its unique linking system.

[–] Oinks@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've used NixOS, wasn't that big of a fan. I certainly love the idea, but not the execution.

Would you mind elaborating on that? I do have some suspicions but I would love to hear what bothered you about it.

[–] nobody_1677@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's pretty minimal out of the box (a bit like Arch). Unlike Fedora with SELinux or Ubuntu with AppArmor which come configured and enforcing out of the box.
Nix is a programming language, and a complex one at that. There are plenty of ways to achieve the same goal. But as a novice or even intermediate user, it's hard to know which is the best way. It also doesn't help when you go with Way A and later want to do something else, but you find someone's setup that uses Way B. Should I switch to Way B too? Or should I try to combine both ways into Way C?
Flakes. First off, it's annoying to have everyone say that NixOS is declarative and reproducible. Then you look into it a bit more and the story changes to "oh actually you need to enable this experimental feature to get better reproducibility". But the part that actually annoys me is how everyone uses flakes and expects you to too, but it's been an experimental feature forever and doesn't seem any closer to becoming not-experimental.
Linking issues. Say I install something like nvim with nix, then an nvim plugin wants to install something. That plugin isn't aware of nix and tries to do things the Unix way, but that breaks. I know there are two solutions/workarounds to this problem; some packages are patched to avoid this and there's something you can put in your configuration that "emulates" a more traditional environment that's more compatible.
I like sandboxing so I would use flatpak in NixOS. But there was some issue with fonts and icons I believe. I can't remember if this PR fixed it or not: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/119433
Not the best UX out of the box. It's common to find people with nix caches of hundred of gigabytes large because the system doesn't automatically clean things up.

[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

But the part that actually annoys me is how everyone uses flakes and expects you to too, but it’s been an experimental feature forever and doesn’t seem any closer to becoming not-experimental.

Lix at least doesn't pretend that Flakes is something obscure.

[–] Oinks@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Then you look into it a bit more and the story changes to "oh actually you need to enable this experimental feature to get better reproducibility".

This unfortunately gets misunderstood a lot, mostly because of the stupid flake hype. You do not need flakes for reproducibility, Nix comes with a fetchTarball builtin function which allows you to pin a specific Nixpkgs commit and output hash.

You're right though, I agree on basically every point (including the part about flakes).

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