Principle Skinner on Immutable Distros

LarkinDePark , 46 minutes ago

Principal

ikidd , 48 minutes ago

I went through a NixOS phase, and for a user that isn’t trying to maintain a dev environment, it’s a bloody lot of hassle.

I’m all behind immutable distros even though I don’t particularly have the need for them, but declaritive OSs are kinda niche.

Prunebutt , 24 minutes ago (edited 5 minutes ago)

They’re the bee’s knees if you have a homelab, though.

ikidd , 16 minutes ago

Maybe homelab stuff that you mess with a lot and need to revert or stand up a multitude? I tried it for self-hosted apps and frankly a docker host is way easier. JB guys were pushing it for Nextcloud and it was a nightmare compared to the Docker AIO. I guess you could stand it up as a docker host OS, but I just use Debian, it’s pretty much bulletproof and again, less hassle.

Prunebutt , 11 minutes ago

I recently switched to nixos, because my ACME image was failing all of a sudden and I didn’t know enough what was going on under the hood to fix it.

It was a steep learning curve, but the infrastructure as code approach just works too well for me, since I just forget too much what I did three years ago, when doing things imperatively.

demesisx OP , 21 minutes ago (edited 15 minutes ago)

for a user that isn’t trying to maintain a dev environment, it’s a bloody lot of hassle

I agree but I prefer it to things like ansible for sure. I’m also happy to never have to run 400 apt install commands in a specific order lest I have to start again from scratch on a new system.

Another place I swear by it is in the declaration of drives. I used to have to use a bash script on boot that would update fstab every time I booted (I mount an NFS volume in my LAN as if it were native to my machine) then unmount it on shutdown. With nix, I haven’t had to invent solutions for that weird quirk (and any other quirks) since day one because I simply declared it like so:

<span style="color:#323232;">{
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  config,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  lib,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  pkgs,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  inputs,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  ...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}: {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  fileSystems."/boot" = {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/bort";
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    fsType = "vfat";
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  };
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  fileSystems."/" = {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/lisa";
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    fsType = "ext4";
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  };
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  swapDevices = [
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    {device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/homer";}
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  ];
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  fileSystems."/home/mrskinner/video" = {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    device = "192.168.8.130:/volume/video";
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    options = ["x-systemd.automount" "noauto"];
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    fsType = "nfs";
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  };
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  fileSystems."/home/mrskinner/Programming" = {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    device = "192.168.8.130:/volume/Programming";
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    options = ["x-systemd.automount" "noauto"];
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    fsType = "nfs";
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  };
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  fileSystems."/home/mrskinner/music" = {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    device = "192.168.8.130:/volume/music";
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    options = ["x-systemd.automount" "noauto"];
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    fsType = "nfs";
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  };
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span>

IMO, where they really shine is in the context of declarative dev environments where the dependencies can be locked in place FOREVER if needed. I even use Nix to build OCI/Docker containers with their definitions declared right inside of my dev flake for situations where I have to work with people who hate the Nix way.

Carighan , 2 hours ago

Are we back in time 30 years when resettable systems were a new thing and controversial?

demesisx OP , 2 hours ago

Perhaps! I’m a big fan of immutable distros. This meme was inspired by being called an asshole for agreeing with another commment, calling it a skill issue when this one commenter flat out refused to acknowledge ANY of the positive aspects of them.

stingpie , 1 hour ago

So you made a meme about how your opponent is completely irrational and you are a paragon of logic and reason, and then proceeded to declare yourself the winner?

demesisx OP , 1 hour ago

I really didn’t declare myself the winner. IMO, I won’t have to when the software will do that when this way of working usurps container-style development as the de-facto standard.

As an actual old man who was able to adapt, I simply pointed out that OP sounds like an old man, unable to acknowledge an obvious trend where immutable systems are clearly gaining popularity and are seen by many as the correct way to provision a mission-critical system.

HakFoo , 32 minutes ago

I suspect the tooling isn’t quite there yet for desktop use cases.

If I were to try to replicate my current desktop in an immutable model, it would involve a lot of manual labour in scripting or checkpointing every time I installed or configured something, to save a few hours of labour in 2 years time when I get a new drive or do a full install.

The case is easier for defined workload servers and dev environments that are regularly spun up fresh.

demesisx OP , 8 minutes ago

to try to replicate my current desktop in an immutable model, it would involve a lot of manual labour in scripting or checkpointing every time I installed or configured something, to save a few hours of labour in 2 years time when I get a new drive or do a full install.

If you have only one system, you might find the benefits not to be worth the bikeshedding effort.

However, I suspect that you’d be surprised with how easy it can be using home-manager. I have literally nothing that I need to do to a newly compiled NixOS system from my config because EVERYTHING is declared and provided inside of that config.

If you don’t mind, can you give me an example of something in your config that you think is impossible or difficult to port to the Nix style? I’d be happy to attempt to Nixify it to prove my point. I’ve pretty much figured out how to do everything in the Nix way.

and I don’t mind if I end up being incredibly wrong on this point and promise to be intellectually honest about it if I am indeed wrong. It just sounds like a fun exercise for me.

kbal , 1 hour ago

Not really. Now they're old and controversial.