On long term stable release systems like Linux Mint or Debian, Flathub (or foreign package managers like Nix/Guix) should be your go to for installing software, let the distribution itself manage its core system components which I wish he clarified when he saw Flathub taking multiple GBs on first download.

For beginners it doesn’t really matter and this advice will get them going, but I do want to push back on this a bit.

There are two methods of solving the problem of dependency hell. Package managers are the correct way. Distribution package managers are incredibly robust and should always be the first option. These are state-of-the-art systems. They look at what is compatible, they restrain you from doing things which won’t work, and they make sure EVERYTHING gets upgraded when a new exploit is discovered. The other way of solving dependency hell is bundling. Bundling is when every application ships with its own versions of its own dependencies. Bundling tends to work with a lot less up-front effort, but it takes up more space (on disk and in memory), and it also means you have several versions of these dependencies lying around, and they don’t get updated automatically. They might never get updated unless the individual producers of the software decide so (and you remember to keep track of their announcements). This essentially reproduces the security model we’re familliar with under Windows. Where we fetch software from all corners of the internet, install it, and it never gets updated.

It takes a little longer for everything to come together in a distribution package repository, but this is due to the amount of effort distribution maintainers invest in testing, as well as stripping out bundled dependencies and ensuring they can be independently tracked and updated. Distributions will keep software running on the newest available dependencies even if upstream development has been dormant for some time.

Now, not every package repository has a laser focus on every discipline. Where they fall short, this is where things like AppImages and FlatPaks (or cloning a Git repository and compiling it yourself) come in handy. But this is all technical debt. This is stuff you end up becoming responsible for maintaining yourself, which won’t update along with your distribution. The more work you let your distribution do for you, the less effort it will take to keep things running smoothly.

If something packaged by your distribution doesn’t work, trying out a bundled package (AppImage, FlatPak, or a language-specific package manager like cargo/pip/npm etc) can be a great sanity check. If your VLC is broken and you try an AppImage of it and it works, A: you get to watch your movie, and B: You’ve learned something. Try to figure out why one works and the other doesn’t.

flatseal

having to install and fiddle with a whole other program just to get permissions right for an app is so annoying lol. I like flatpaks for some stuff but really I prefer the distro version unless there’s a compelling reason (package not available or woefully out of date in the repo, etc)

I just installed Mint and I’m enjoying it so far, except that I regularly use some programs that just do not work with Linux, even using various workarounds. I’m going to be dual booting windows basically just because I need Fusion 360 for my CAD work and open-source equivalents aren’t nearly as good.

Is there any interest in having a custom nixos config/flake that can turn any basic nixos install into “HexbearOS”? Something like a less tweaked out version of ZaneyOS?

It’s a huge rabbit-hole to jump down with it’s custom scripting language and with how much can be refined, and by all accounts the documentation is lacking so if you hit a problem it can be difficult to resolve, but making a basic “hexbear.nix” file with just basic useful programs to install, that anyone with a fresh nixos install can copy and add as an import in their configuration.nix, would be trivial as a start.

for instance:

example.nix

{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs;
  [
    #silly terminal ascii apps
    cmatrix 
    hollywood
    nms
    lolcat
  ];
}

save it to a file in /etc/nixos, add it into the imports under ./hardware-configuration.nix, rebuild, and you should have all those installed (as long as I didn’t screw up the syntax).

I’ve been screwing around with a basic nixos install on a VM, just seeing if it could replace my home debian server, and some of the things it can do are nuts with how powerful it is and how well a lot of it works. And having all the options in the form of it’s scripting language, with all the files in one directory, as opposed to scattered throughout /etc with various different config file formats, is a lot more intuitive than I was expecting.

It been super easy to set it up to autoinstall all the packages I want want, with bottles for windows apps, and flatpaks available through the gnome software center to allow for easy user installs of other things so you don’t have to edit config files unless you want to.

Getting jellyfin working was basically one line in the config, for example.

The hard part would be the calamares installer.

Bad idea or no?

I always ended up having really annoying problems with the flatpak version of steam. Maybe fixed these days but I generally go with the native build since it seems to work more consistently. Other than that flathub is great for everything else but sometimes the stores can be really crappy at updating flatpaks and will lock up so i found its better to update it via the command line which doesn’t tend to break. I don’t know why the stores on so many distros shit the bed so hard but its a real blocker for getting non techy people to use when they’re this broken

As you’ve mentioned in your nitpicks, I HIGHLY recommend advanced users learn to use Nix for packages unavailable in their distro’s repos. I have foundational libs and apps from my distro’s packages, any proprietary or electron garbage in flatpak (although I use native steam and jetbrains toolbox, bc they work better for me that way), and anything else is through nix-env or nix-shell. There is SO MUCH available through the Nix repos and the tooling is incredible.

I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

• yewtu.be
• inv.nadeko.net
• yt.artemislena.eu
• piped.video