I don’t like apt too as much. But, interface-wise, you can make it way better with Nala, which is a frontend for it.
NixOS is too complicated and demanding for most users, who aren’t programmers or hobbyists, imo.
I prefer Fedora Atomic. It has the same pros (unbreakable, highly configurable with universal-blue.org, etc.) but feels way more user friendly.
I use it with Distrobox on top, so I can use my package manager/ distro of choice (turned out to be Arch btw) on a extremely reliable system.
For your case, you can replicate Mint by just installing the Cinnamon image from uBlue and applying some minimal tweaks.
Then you get the user friendliness from Mint with the flexibility and unbreakability from NixOS. Do you like the idea? Just in case you get annoyed by NixOS in the future 🙃
Seems like a fine idea, but nixos is just exactly what I want from a distro it turns out and nix is just the package manager I wanted but never knew I did.
I don’t think OSTree systems can quite reach the flexibility of NixOS. For instance with NixOS (with direnv and nix-shells) you can essentially swap out your running system based on the different directories you enter and I think that’s still just scraping the top of the iceberg. From my experience with OSTree (which is admittedly somewhat limited) I don’t think you can reach that level of flexibility.
It’s still really cool, I don’t mean to shit on that, I’m just saying NixOS and OSTree have different pros and cons and use cases.
I like the idea of the fedora immutable distros, but the reliance on flatpak makes me a bit nervous (guess I’m just old-fashioned)… I think some kind of solution that puts a stable system like Debian or immutable fedora with a package manager like Nix might be very good (I know the U-Blue guys have been playing with homebrew?)
You can still install Nix (package manager) on Atomic, on uBlue, it even comes pre-installed afaik.
And also, there’s Distrobox, which is totally enough if you prefer package managers over Flatpaks.
I personally like the “reliance” on Flatpaks. I think it reduces the fragmentation and makes it easier for devs, but that’s just my opinion. Do as you prefer.
Actually, I just tried both homebrew and Nix with a Debian 12 installation and I’m not impressed. Homebrew only ships CLI apps, and GUI applications installed with Nix famously don’t show up in application launchers… it seems like you don’t really get the features of Nix unless you use NixOS.
I don’t like apt too as much. But, interface-wise, you can make it way better with Nala, which is a frontend for it.
NixOS is too complicated and demanding for most users, who aren’t programmers or hobbyists, imo.
I prefer Fedora Atomic. It has the same pros (unbreakable, highly configurable with universal-blue.org, etc.) but feels way more user friendly.
I use it with Distrobox on top, so I can use my package manager/ distro of choice (turned out to be Arch btw) on a extremely reliable system.
For your case, you can replicate Mint by just installing the Cinnamon image from uBlue and applying some minimal tweaks.
Then you get the user friendliness from Mint with the flexibility and unbreakability from NixOS. Do you like the idea? Just in case you get annoyed by NixOS in the future 🙃
Seems like a fine idea, but nixos is just exactly what I want from a distro it turns out and nix is just the package manager I wanted but never knew I did.
I don’t think OSTree systems can quite reach the flexibility of NixOS. For instance with NixOS (with direnv and nix-shells) you can essentially swap out your running system based on the different directories you enter and I think that’s still just scraping the top of the iceberg. From my experience with OSTree (which is admittedly somewhat limited) I don’t think you can reach that level of flexibility.
It’s still really cool, I don’t mean to shit on that, I’m just saying NixOS and OSTree have different pros and cons and use cases.
I like the idea of the fedora immutable distros, but the reliance on flatpak makes me a bit nervous (guess I’m just old-fashioned)… I think some kind of solution that puts a stable system like Debian or immutable fedora with a package manager like Nix might be very good (I know the U-Blue guys have been playing with homebrew?)
You can still install Nix (package manager) on Atomic, on uBlue, it even comes pre-installed afaik.
And also, there’s Distrobox, which is totally enough if you prefer package managers over Flatpaks.
I personally like the “reliance” on Flatpaks. I think it reduces the fragmentation and makes it easier for devs, but that’s just my opinion. Do as you prefer.
Actually, I just tried both homebrew and Nix with a Debian 12 installation and I’m not impressed. Homebrew only ships CLI apps, and GUI applications installed with Nix famously don’t show up in application launchers… it seems like you don’t really get the features of Nix unless you use NixOS.