Had the same experience at work. Brand new work laptop with Windows and a bunch of mandatory spyware. Personal laptop running Linux on 10 year old hardware. Linux machine is more responsive and pleasant to use.
LeFantome
joined 2 years ago
Linux on old laptops is a joy. I spent my morning on an old MacBook Pro that I found on the recycled electronics bench when I dropped off some bottles. Runs great (Niri instead of Hyprland but similar).
I have not used Nix, so I may not know what I am talking about.
That said, I have been using Chimera Linux which uses the APK package manager. It works by maintaining a single file in /etc/apk/world that specifies all the packages the user wants on the system. This is used to calculate dependencies and install packages. When you “add” and “del” packages, all it is really doing is adding and removing from this list. If you remove a package, it will remove all the dependencies too unless they appear in the “world” file.
If you do not specify a version number for a package, you get the latest. But you can pin versions of you want.
If you copy the world file from one system to another, you get the same set of installed packages.
So, if I use git to backup my world file, maybe a couple of other entries in /etc, and the dot files in my home directory, I have pretty much everything I need to completely recreate my system.
Is it really worth all the extra complexity of Nix?
Well, if you use Wayback, I am not sure you can use Wayland applications. Hoping somebody can confirm or deny this.
I think you effectively would be ditching Wayland though as I do not think you can run Wayland applications.
I am trying to understand the difference between Wayback and running Xwayland in Cage.
I’m Wayback, will I still be able to run Wayland applications? Or am I literally just running an Xserver that uses Wayland for the DDX layer?
Not to correct you but, if people try to search based on your recommendation, it is “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”.
Honestly, not even in this case (especially given the history). Kent has a kernel tree people can pull if they need to. If it is an emergency, point people there.
As somebody that uses this filesystem, I disagree.
If you want to use it as a server, Fedora is annoying because the support lifetimes are so short.
If you want the Fedora / Red Hat experience, consider Alma Linux. Skills wise, it is like using Res Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) which is an in-demand skill set.
Reading all the comments (between Kent and Linux), the problem is that the bcachefs dev thinks that his project (the filesystem) is the critically important one and that the Linux kernel needs to bend to his will.
I am a bcachefs user but it is pretty damn obvious to me that the production Linux kernel is more important than an experimental filesystem.
When Linux hits 10%, you will see hardware ship with Linux drivers day one.