I make things: electronics and software and music and stories and all sorts of other things.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • NixOS is great

    My workflow hasn't changed much except I now find myself writing shell.nix files in my projects instead of having various compilers and build tools installed in my config itself since adding a random one-off dependency for a project is tedious if it doesn't get added to the correct environment variable or something. Ultimately, this is really a benefit tho as it means I have a reproducible dev environment that can be shared with anyone else.

    It also simplifies a lot of configuration stuff with sane defaults making it way easier to spin up things that might take a little bit of messing around, e.g. different desktop sessions (currently, I mostly use i3 and GNOME Wayland + Pop Shell, but I've experimented with others).

    It's more about how clear it is for me to get to my workflow. The Nix system (language, package manager, and OS) is really just beautiful once you get your head around everything.

    I've been on Nix now for a few months coming from Fedora (1 year) and before that Arch (3 years), and I've loved every second so far. I use it for both work (embedded software engineer) and personal. It feels like the last thing I'll ever config


  • it's impossible to keep up with all of the changes

    Literally not true. It's all handled for you. You could use a stable system like Debian or Gentoo for years without updating or only getting security patches or use a rolling system and get all the updates easily. No one says you've gotta reinstall your system all the time. Every distro has some way to keep up with updates. It's not like you've gotta compile every program yourself and pull the git repo every few days or reinstall your OS every year.

    Way Too Many Choices

    Linux's biggest obstacle is the paradox of choice

    If you are scared of the options available for Linux, you are ignorant. It's understandable some people get anxiety when presented with too many equal options, but the thing is they have to be equal options. This is not the case in the Linux world. The options are all different. You as a user will want different things than other users. You may not have thought about what you want, but you do have wants. You have an idea of how you want to use your computer. It's a matter of doing a Google search to find what option provides your choice. It's not like choosing between 5 ice cream flavors you all like; it's like choosing what to eat between ice cream, vomit, feces, a rock, and a block of wood. There's a clear right choice. If you really believe that there are an overwhelming amount of choices of Linux, you are simply ignorant of the most basic UX differences. Like, you haven't even tried to compare. You just heard "there are 2 things" and panicked.

    I'm really tired of this stupid myth of too much fragmentation in Linux that gets passed around. There's a reason for the fragmentation; it's not arbitrary, so it doesn't hurt to have it. We're talking bare minimum looking stuff up or asking a question.

    Why? Because Linux is high maintenance.

    Only true if you mess with stuff. If you're a newcomer and just want stuff to work. Pick some common, stable OS like Ubuntu, use flatpaks or snaps, and it will just work.

    I did nothing out of the ordinary -- yet somehow it ended up breaking my desktop. The result? Neither Unity nor Gnome worked properly, so I went back to Windows to cool off... and haven't been back to Linux since.

    Ah okay, this article was written nearly a decade ago. That checks out. There were several significant improvements to Linux around 5 years ago or so.

    But also, "nothing out of the ordinary?" Installing a totally new desktop environment is "nothing out of the ordinary?" It's something you can't even do on Mac and Windows!

    Software Quality Is Mostly Sub-Par

    Just untrue. There are tons of fantastic FOSS apps out there with better UX than I get even from proprietary apps. Another myth that has 0 Google searching behind it. I mean look at the GNOME apps. They're all really really good for the most part.

    This probably also comes from the age of the article too. A lot of that came like 5 or so years ago. There were some big pushes.

    There are some important proprietary apps that are unavailable with no great alternatives like Photoshop, that's fair, but for FOSS apps that are just trying to do what they want to do, there's some with great UI.



    • Wayland has several new features like, say, removing screen tearing, but it's not necessarily "advantages" that are the reason to use Wayland. It's sort of a redo of how graphics should work in the Linux world, and it will be the standard going forward. X11 development has more or less ceased with those developers moving to Wayland (in fact, Wayland was created by X11 developers to address issues they had with the architecture of X11). It's not a matter of should you switch to Wayland; it's a matter of when should you switch to Wayland. The answer is, as soon as you can.
    • Gaming varies drastically. Some games are fine. Some games make me launch Steam via Lutris to start (not sure why it works, but it does) but run fine after. Some games can't reach higher framerates. That said, no screen tearing is a plus. When it works, Wayland is very smooth, but it doesn't always work yet. An example off the top of my head, no matter what I do, Street Fighter 6 doesn't get above 45 fps on Wayland. It's a good idea to have an X11 option as a backup still imo
    • The best way to migrate is just to install a Wayland compatible DE/WM. I've used both GNOME Wayland and Hyprland extensively and they both work great. If you're used to i3 (that's what I used to use and is still my X11 backup), Hyprland is great. KDE like you have on your Desktop already works good on Wayland from what I've heard.
    • I have made the switch because most of my apps can run on Wayland, and it's the future. I still have a backup in case there's a game or something that doesn't quite work for me. For instance, I can't share screen on discord. It won't even recognize the pipewire route. Thus, I've gotta switch to X if I want to do that.