I've known this since before I found Nix in 2016
  • PlexSheep@infosec.pubEnglish
    3·
    1 hour ago

    Nix is weird and confusing, and I say that as a self holster and student of computer science. Nix is a weird side thing.

  • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
    142·
    7 hours ago

    Nix needs a typed language, better CLI interface, better documentation, a distributed cache, to to get rid of the monorepo / single source of control, to support different builders (aka not just bash), and have a less toxic community.

    For nix to be used by normal, non technical users, it must have a GUI. That is not optional.

    Nix could be great for a lot of things, but it’s not the only solution and won’t be the last.

    Anti Commercial-AI license

    • paperd@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      As it stands now, I don’t think nix wants “regular users”; rather it wants user/contributors.

    • fl42vEnglish
      5·
      5 hours ago

      Nix is typed: there are strings, paths, lists, attrsets, etc;

      Not sure what’s wrong with CLI, as I don’t really use it except nix flake update (although I remember updating stuff installed via nix profile being a bit cumbersome, but it’s not exactly a good practice to use it this way);

      Good point with cache, although stuff outside of nixpkgs sometimes provides their own caches which are trivial to enable;

      Nobody forces you to use github:nixos/nixpkgs, it’s just a regular input. Ppl quite often have their own forks. It’s also trivial to use stuff from outside nixpkgs (also just another input);

      There are different builders (e.g. buildGoModule);

      Idk where you’ve found toxic community, my interactions have been pretty nice so far (mostly matrix rooms);

      GUI is optional, just like for all the other package managers. And it exists: https://github.com/snowfallorg/nix-software-center

      Perfectly agreed with nix not (yet 🙃) being the best thing that exists, tho, albeit due to different reasons. For example, it’s a PITA to debug, and the error messages are sometimes unhelpful.

      • priapus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        1 hour ago

        The CLI is good, but it’s need to be stabilized. The CLI you’re describing is the version 3 CLI, but there are still use-cases where you need to use the version 2 CLI.

      • sunstoned@lemmus.orgEnglish
        1·
        3 hours ago

        I agree, the CLI is good enough. Thanks for the note about the GUI package manager! I hadn’t heard about that.

        I also second the positive interactions. Mine have been almost exclusively positive. I’ve come across a few no effort “RTFM, idiot” attitudes but it’s rarer on Nix forums and repos than I’ve seen elsewhere.

  • dinckel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    10 hours ago

    The headline felt a little weird, but turns out this wasn’t written by Eelco. I thought how can they have found nix in 2016 if they’ve created it to begin with lol

    Either way, I’ve switched all by one of my machines to Nix now, including my Darwin laptop, and it’s honestly been pretty damn good.

    Aside from the huge learning curve, and a pretty depressing turnover rate for an occasional package update request, especially when it comes to home-manager.

    The ability to have a flake structure, that you can push to git, and then re-use on all of your systems, is huge.