I mean isn’t it accepted that NixOS is a terrible pick for a beginner, especially a non-technical one? I feel like even the Nix community doesn’t recommend the distro to complete beginners.
Complete with home manager, flakes, build server and automated deployments, the whole lot on machines from compute stick, gaming rig, hell even a surface. I have never had more free time than compared to arch. updates & config drift are no longer anything I worry about. Save so much time on rebuilds & customisations.
Nixos users never recommend it for new users. I always recommend mint or Ubuntu depending on the person and what they are used to. Seasoned Linux users i don’t even recommend it unless they have basic programming skills.
After that, bring it on, stick through the learning curve, you dont need the documentation. I only needed it at the start for a short period until it clicked and I figured it out. the repo and search has more than enough. In the repo you will find community builds and configs for a wide variety of hardware.
I’m not advanced, just a distrohopper for fun :-) but NixOs seemed excellent, you install like an other os, open the config file and write a list of what you want installed, rebuild and it’s all there. Then use it just like any other distro. That seems a good experience to me and if you are just a simple desktop user like me what else would you ever need to do? Am I right that all the homemanager and flakes business is optional and for people with more complicated requirements?
I really wish everyone thought like that, but I still see people recommending Nix, Arch, Void… and some go the ideological route and start recommending systemd-less only like Artix or ranting against anything that uses Flatpak. Those discussions can get messy, and they always alienate the person who asked.
Unfortunately those with ideological reasons are always the loudest and present in basically every “Beginner’s Help” group.
I wouldn’t recommend vanilla Arch only because of the installation process. CachyOS that simplifies it is an extremely good pick for a person who already knows what a computer is, but wants to try a proper OS.
Arch mostly got it’s reputation in the early days. Today some things are a lot easier to do on Arch than on other distros, especially because AUR exists. Also, it built one of the best wikis over all that time.
Of the last 20 or so people iv helped swap over to Linux in the last year. They have all ended up just going straight to either endeavour or cachy.
The Ubuntu family distro like mint or pop always have some kinda of weird hardware problem with something. Everytime with out fail. Seriously I love the Ubuntu descendants like pop and mint. When they work, they just fucking work and are rock solid. But their it just works scope is just too damn narrow compared to arch for the freaks I know.
It’s amazing how much weird ass hardware people use that with out something as large as the aur, you just aren’t finding a reasonable solution. Fixes exist but ones that a total idiot can just install are rare. And fedora isnt much better in that regard.
Fedora also just has… Problems ane a community that makes it hard to tell new users to Google solutions
That or the “app stores” confuse the new users or cause problems inside of two weeks. Im always baffled Everytime I get a call and someone has managed to break their computer via a GUI package manager or app store.
Cachy just has everything games want pre installed and even the most nontechie gamers iv known basically hit the ground running with it. I think part of that is because it works for the exact use case a gamer would want basically out of the box with as little fiddling as needed and arch is bleeding edge enough to actually run new games reliably enough people don’t fuck with shit and break it trying to make things work.
For the rest endeavour has had the best rate at actually keeping people from just going back to windows.
Seriously wild how good endeavours conversion rate is.
For most people though yeah, Debian is rock solid, only went arch on my desktop for nvidia drivers (and HDR), archinstall really simplifies installing it.
Arch and Debian wikis are both amazing sources of information, highly recommend for any distro.
I mean isn’t it accepted that NixOS is a terrible pick for a beginner, especially a non-technical one? I feel like even the Nix community doesn’t recommend the distro to complete beginners.
I use Nixos BTW.
And I can’t recommend it to anyone. Not even veterans.
I can only say if you like souls like games nixos might be your thing…
Doubt, highly doubt it.
I use nixos btw
Complete with home manager, flakes, build server and automated deployments, the whole lot on machines from compute stick, gaming rig, hell even a surface. I have never had more free time than compared to arch. updates & config drift are no longer anything I worry about. Save so much time on rebuilds & customisations.
Nixos users never recommend it for new users. I always recommend mint or Ubuntu depending on the person and what they are used to. Seasoned Linux users i don’t even recommend it unless they have basic programming skills.
After that, bring it on, stick through the learning curve, you dont need the documentation. I only needed it at the start for a short period until it clicked and I figured it out. the repo and search has more than enough. In the repo you will find community builds and configs for a wide variety of hardware.
I’m not advanced, just a distrohopper for fun :-) but NixOs seemed excellent, you install like an other os, open the config file and write a list of what you want installed, rebuild and it’s all there. Then use it just like any other distro. That seems a good experience to me and if you are just a simple desktop user like me what else would you ever need to do? Am I right that all the homemanager and flakes business is optional and for people with more complicated requirements?
Lol I’ve been considering trying it and that might push me per the edge. The self hate is strong xD
If you do, this website is very helpful: https://search.nixos.org/options
I wish. People recommend Arch to beginners all the time. And then wonder why there’s so many “Linux is too hard” comments everywhere
Arch isn’t necessarily hard. It just is unstable plus it encourages dated ways of doing things.
Those make it hard
And it just seems towering overall with the insane egos of some Arch users on forums. It’s a good distro, just setting it up feels so tiring.
I feel like setting it up is easy (archinstall), maintaining it is the tiring part.
Its weird because Gentoo is actually more involved but the community seems to have none of the ego issues.
I really wish everyone thought like that, but I still see people recommending Nix, Arch, Void… and some go the ideological route and start recommending systemd-less only like Artix or ranting against anything that uses Flatpak. Those discussions can get messy, and they always alienate the person who asked. Unfortunately those with ideological reasons are always the loudest and present in basically every “Beginner’s Help” group.
I wouldn’t recommend vanilla Arch only because of the installation process. CachyOS that simplifies it is an extremely good pick for a person who already knows what a computer is, but wants to try a proper OS.
Arch mostly got it’s reputation in the early days. Today some things are a lot easier to do on Arch than on other distros, especially because AUR exists. Also, it built one of the best wikis over all that time.
Of the last 20 or so people iv helped swap over to Linux in the last year. They have all ended up just going straight to either endeavour or cachy.
The Ubuntu family distro like mint or pop always have some kinda of weird hardware problem with something. Everytime with out fail. Seriously I love the Ubuntu descendants like pop and mint. When they work, they just fucking work and are rock solid. But their it just works scope is just too damn narrow compared to arch for the freaks I know.
It’s amazing how much weird ass hardware people use that with out something as large as the aur, you just aren’t finding a reasonable solution. Fixes exist but ones that a total idiot can just install are rare. And fedora isnt much better in that regard.
Fedora also just has… Problems ane a community that makes it hard to tell new users to Google solutions
That or the “app stores” confuse the new users or cause problems inside of two weeks. Im always baffled Everytime I get a call and someone has managed to break their computer via a GUI package manager or app store.
Cachy just has everything games want pre installed and even the most nontechie gamers iv known basically hit the ground running with it. I think part of that is because it works for the exact use case a gamer would want basically out of the box with as little fiddling as needed and arch is bleeding edge enough to actually run new games reliably enough people don’t fuck with shit and break it trying to make things work.
For the rest endeavour has had the best rate at actually keeping people from just going back to windows.
Seriously wild how good endeavours conversion rate is.
Weird way to spell EndeavorOS
EndeavorOS? Yay!
With the missing ‘U’? I know, right? But it’s not weird; it’s just American, so it rewrites its history.
For most people though yeah, Debian is rock solid, only went arch on my desktop for nvidia drivers (and HDR), archinstall really simplifies installing it.
Arch and Debian wikis are both amazing sources of information, highly recommend for any distro.