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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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Nothing about Linux users is quiet.
I use arch btw
I have found myself deep in the Nix and nixOS ecosystem myself.
Somehow I feel like mentioning Nix and NixOS is the new 'I use arch btw'.
(No offense, but reading the 'I use arch btw' and then your response right after made me realize this)
"I use Nix btw"
Rolls off the tongue in the same way. And, honestly, "I use Arch btw" just isn't the same hipster know-it-all contrarian meme that it used to be. It has a graphical installer now, and a popular retail device (the Steam Deck) comes with a user-friendly derivative of it installed out of the box.
Meanwhile, NixOS has a huge learning curve that's off-putting to most non-technical users and even Linux hobbiests. I mean, really—having to configure everything through a functional programming language masquerading as a configuration file format? That's just the kind of thing that would attract masochists and pedants!
I use Nix btw.
I just left nixos after about two years, and now on cachyos (arch). nixos is pretty cool in a lot of ways, but trying to stay on the bleeding edge of packages and kernels means living in nixos-unstable land, where broken builds are common. and I just got tired of it all.
My condolences
Fun fact: if you have a Steam Deck, Nix (the package manager) is pretty much the only vendor-approved way to safely install extra packages that aren't otherwise available as a flatpak.
Trying to screw with overlayfs to make pacman usable is/was a thing, and it was a very good way to break the OS install despite it having atomic updates.
Fun fact: SteamOS comes pre-loaded with Distrobox so you can install whatever packages you want.
That's new. Always good to see them add more ways to customize it.
I think it has been a feature since around 6 months after launch of the Steam Deck but it's not well known and widely used feature.
Does Steam Deck not have rpm-ostree (or an arch equivalent since RPM is fedora-specific)?
Needs "pac-ostree" or something...
Also, what about distrobox?
I haven't really tried to do anything package manager-related on my Deck, so I'm going on what I know from Bazzite, but there are several ways to install non-flatpak software on it. In fact, I even installed yay on an Arch distrobox, and I can install things from the AUR (as well as the official repositories).
Steam Deck has a custom solution involving an A/B partition scheme of immutable btrfs filesystems and overlayfs for layering changes on top of that.
If there's a way to install containerization software with Flatpak, maybe. Docker isn't available out of the box, though.
You can use pacman, but it's volatile and requires making intentional changes to restore its functionality.
The first option is to disable the read-only flag on the root filesystem, then set pacman back up so it can pull packages. Whenever the root filesystem image is updated, you'll lose the changes, though.
The second option is to add an overlayfs to persist the changes in a different partition or inside a disk image on the writable storage. There was a tool called "rwfus" that did this, and it worked well enough if you were careful. If you ended up upgrading a package that came installed on the base image, though, it would end up breaking the install when the next update came around.
With all the caveats, when Valve made
/nixavailable as a persistent overlay a couple of years ago, I just bit the bullet and learned how to use Nix to install packages withnix-env -i.Huh, interesting. Thanks for the info
Distrobox works really well in Bazzite, in fact I'm currently typing this comment in LibreWolf in a Fedora toolbox because I was getting a weird lag with the flatpak version. You wouldn't even know if you didn't set it up yourself, since it's just an icon on my launcher like any other program. No noticeable overhead whatsoever either.
SteamOS also ships distrobox OOTB now, so you can use this anywhere.
Awesome
But but Phoronix just told me yesterday that Linux users went dramatically down on Steam from 3% to 2.99%! Almost like this weekly/monthly claim of Linux users "crossing" another imaginary threshold line hold as much value as this comment /s
To be fair, we have to be that way to push back against the field of inveitability that omnipresent corporate marketing creates in our minds.
The extroverted nerdiness is an effective tool to communally deprogram our rheified way of looking at computers so we can envision a different future.