It’s probably wise to simply ignore the drama. Open source seems to invite this at the “top” for whatever reason, but for the casual user there is usually little to no impact.
Unless you’re trying to be a top contributor to nix, I would just carry on with normal usage and all the current drama will blow over.
uh, the drama being what it is about people in positions of power blocking efforts to make a welcoming and diverse nixos community, persisting right wing concern trolling, and especially what appears to be maybe a military tech company takeover of nixos, it's hella understandable people would want to reconsider using this tech on their own hardware and it's pretty sus to respond to this with 'ah just drama it'll blow over'...
Just like the xz backdoor I agree "nothing to see here, move along" seems like bad advice.
It is curious to wonder how much state actors and militaries are involved in weaponizing FOSS culture to purge potential perceived opponents.
For this reason sticking to technological merit and leaving personal beliefs out of FOSS seems wise.
FOSS shouldn't be state actor's play thing. When leadership behaves radically and is exclusive it looses my respect & support.
military tech company
wait until they find out where computers and the internet came from. or Tor... GPS, etc etc.
Of how much “militsry” contributed to FOSS. Or how Linux is no longer the lone programmer hacking on code in there spare time. But the vast majority of FOSS is done by companies.
Understandable, maybe to some. But no matter how hard the activist core currently in charge of the moderation team would like me to believe it, not everyone brings political activism to the table on this project. And that’s a good thing. It is still perfectly possible to enjoy working with good tech and build cool stuff without bringing a soap box alongside your laptop.
Idk imo knowing about the drama makes me hesitant to go back, especially since I switched all my development environments from Nix to Guix and I dont want to have three package managers lol Plus the Guix community seems really close knit
Also, happy cake day!
Conway’s Law applies in this respect; the mess in governance of Nix has produced a product that reflects that mess. Nix started a beautiful movement but like many first movers, they rarely reap long-term rewards.
Oof. That sucks. Didn't know that was a thing
All good reasons to make a decision, I’m not trying to sway anyone in a direction.
I just feel bad when people see drama in a community and wonder if that thing is “safe”. I’ve seen this kind of thing many times before in other communities—PERL, Python, Ruby, Rust, etc—and it never seems to lead to sweeping changes the normal user would notice. It’s pretty safe to assume that day-to-day users of thing can just carry on if they don’t care about the community upset.
I would avoid getting locked in to one platform. Portable and flexible is better
Not to add fuel to the flame by asking, but how’s it been on Guix? I’ve heard Guix does a lot of things better, but also that there’s far less packages and it’s harder on modern hardware.
I'm not the op, but I've been using guix for several months on a new fairly top of the line desktop PC and it's going great. I've been able to play steam games and set up my dev environment with basically no issues.
The catch is you need to use non-official repositories (i.e. https://github.com/nonguix/nonguix) to use the non-libre kernel and other software not on the official channel.
There's also this nice little search engine - https://toys.whereis.みんな/ - where you can look for packages from other repos (or channels as they are called in guix).
I use Nix on my macos work laptop to set up my dev environment, but I definitely prefer guix so far, mostly due to the it being configured in guile over the weird nix language. The biggest advantage I see of Nix is that it has a bit more features and lots more packages.
I am a pretty hardcore emacs user and lisp lover though, so ymmv.
I haven't tried running a full Guix system yet but im really liking it as a package manager on top of arch. Yes, hardware support can be iffy, but there is an unofficial channel called nonguix that packages the standard Linux kernel instead of linux-libre, and yes there are less packages but honestly packages are so much more fun to write? I've written a few package definitions for both my own use and ive made a request to add one to the official channel. And I feel like, if I really needed something that would not be packaged due to complexity or something, I could try and use flatpak or an appimage or something. I think its definitely worth checking out.
I believe there is a much larger, silent majority of nix users, contributors and enthusiasts that are not affected by this drama. Here’s a post that resonates with me: https://nrd.sh/blog/nixos-policy-breakdown/
Over 20 years in this technology space, I’ve come to recognize software built on very solid foundational concepts. Nix is one of those. It’s not going anywhere and neither is NixOS. I encourage anyone interested in Nix to read Eelco Dolstra’s thesis: https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf
That's a thought-provoking article you linked. Thanks. Unfortunately, ideological purity testing is a major problem across all sectors and spans the political spectrum. I was particularly struck by the part of the article that discussed whether "marginalized" status should be considered permanent or temporary.
I've worked in social services for a long time. Social activism is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, marginalized groups need activists to push their agenda. On the other, activists often adopt that social activism as their primary identity and sometimes even their career. This sets up an incentive structure whereby they don't actually want to solve the problem of marginalization. Instead, they focus on ideological purity rather than pragmatically solving whatever problems they face.
Sexual orientation, indigenous rights, trans rights, disability rights, race, gender, even recreational drug use, are all marginalization issues that have all received a reasonable degree of social acknowledgement and formal protection.
In all the years I've worked in social services, the one issue that never goes away and is never solved or even seriously tackled is the intersection of poverty and mental illness. We are getting better as a society with treatable mental illness like depression and anxiety. However, major mental illness or untreatable/undiagnosed conditions like lack of impulse control that make it hard or impossible to work lead almost inexorably to poverty, addiction, and involvement with the criminal justice system. The activism on that front is itself marginalized because the "fix" isn't a matter of changing language or mind set, but rather a massive investment of resources. It is easier to sit behind a keyboard and advocate online for nebulous issues like representation than to get out there and make people care about issues that cost real money.
As someone who works with seriously impoverished and mentally ill people, I find the sometimes extreme drama associated with identity politics, representation, pronouns, etc. rather ridiculous. A lot of it is just people trying to externalize their personal issues and force others to acknowledge them, which is unfortunate when it poisons a project or community. It is a form of narcissism, essentially. People who do that should go down to the tent cities, homeless shelters, and jails to get some perspective on just how "marginalized" they actually are and whether publicly exorcising their personal demons is worth destroying the enjoyment of others in a project or community. Their energy could almost certainly be better spent in less narcissistic pursuits.
When I see posts like this and suggest keeping politics out of technical communities, my comment just gets removed by the mods for "transphobia". I can't even wrap my head around that one...
Other (multiple) times I've had different people respond with "a person's right to exist is not a political issue, it's a human rights issue"... as if I was ever talking about anyone's right to exist.
Then I get the people who say that it's impossible to not have politics in a community, as eventually someone will come along and do things like the SerenityOS drive-by PR and now any action or inaction by the owner that doesn't fit their narrative is labeled as some kind of personal attack against them and they call on their friends to go full-on SJW war against the project because someone had an opinion they don't like.
For you to understand: when you say "keep politics out of tech" that is an explicit political position and you are basically saying "politics for me, but not for you". Or to put it in different terms: unspoken support for the status quo, is a deeply reactionary political position and you are trying to enforce this by "keeping politics out of tech".
I disagree. But I think the overall intention with saying that is simply that we/I don't want to have that discussion or it's off-topic/not the right place. I guess that could be said instead although I doubt it would really make much difference. People will still find a way to complain and boycott even if you do nothing i.e. "silence is violence".
I think a lot of people will simply stay away from your project if you invite that kind of discussion, regardless of who is right or wrong. More people than might otherwise be attracted by arguably more explicit and inclusive stances.
a person’s right to exist is not a political issue, it’s a human rights issue
The funny part is that you forget or ignore the fact that human rights is a political issue, thus the right to exist is political.
I wasn't the one who said that, but I agree with you.
In September the NixOS constitutional assembly should finish their work, and the community will be able to elect governance. I'm guessing that's when the drama will start getting resolved.
In the meantime, there are multiple maintainers that have left because of the drama - which is more troublesome than the board members leaving - but nixpkgs has a LOT of maintainers, and there are new ones joining all the time. It's still healthy and won't implode so quickly.
Informative post. Thank you!
You should know that the guy you cited in the second link, Srid, is a well-known right-wing shit-stirrer who is banned from basically all NixOS spaces because he cannot peacefully coexist. He literally gets up day after day with the seemingly sole purpose of fueling drama and causing problems. Don't take his opinion at face value, he wants to see the project burn down and this colors his interpretation of events.
NixOS is going through a rocky moment for sure, but there's no indication it will implode currently.
My take on it is that the creator of Nix was very good technically but was not a good BDFL, and that was the root of the problem. He didn't do a good job of politicking, stepped down, and now Nix is going through a bit of interregnum. I don't think it's likely to fail overall though, nixpkgs is too valuable of a resource to just get abandoned. I expect the board seats will be filled by people that know how to politick, and things will continue on after that.
Lessons learned is being a BDFL is hard. IMO Eelco Dolstra failed because he had opinions about things like Anduril sponsorship and flakes, and didn't just declare "This is the way things are going to be, take it or leave it". People got really pissed off because there wasn't a clear message or transparency, which resulted in lots of guessing.
IMO politics have no place in technical discussions. Full disclosure, the last time I said this, my comment was removed for "transphobia"... somehow.
What you call politics (US political "issues") and politicking (the act of seeking and organizing power or influence) are different things.
Maybe US political issues have no spot in tech but politics are a part of being human.
Building an open source project is not just a technical challenge. It's a social one as well, and politics are a big factor in that.
As I used to say. The Nix community acts more like a cult of people willing to support flat earth.
Thanks for posting. I was unaware of current events. That's quite the rabbit hole!
I don't believe in immutable distros. They are not well developed now so it's a bubble that should pop soon after people realize they are not ready yet and have a lot of disadvantages. Also they are unsuitable for old PCs and Nix seems relatively good for them so I don't think Nix will die completely but we'll have to see.
Interesting take.
I don’t believe in immutable distros.
This seems more philosophical than on technicalities. If this is correct, would you mind elaborating on the philosophical side?
They are not well developed now
Even if this were the case, shouldn't the constant development and continuous improvement result in something that's (eventually) well-developed? The only way I could see this holding some truth is if by design the 'immutable' model (whatever that is) happens to be broken or something like that. Like, how some file systems are simply better than Btrfs (or any CoW filesystem for that matter) for specific tasks; i.e. ensure to use the right tool for the right task. So, do you pose that 'immutable distros' are by design not well-suited? If so, why?
so it’s a bubble that should pop soon after people realize they are not ready yet
So you (actually) acknowledge and imply that it will become ready at some point. Or not? Furthermore, like how do you reconcile this with Fedora's ambitions for Fedora Atomic? Or how NixOS is going strong (perhaps stronger than ever) while it's been in the making since before Ubuntu?
and have a lot of disadvantages.
And advantages*. Or do you ignore those?
Also they are unsuitable for old PCs
This is false. What makes you think that?
and Nix seems relatively good for them
What's "them" in this sentence? The "old PCs" you had just mentioned? Or something else? Furthermore, if it is the "old PCs", doesn't this directly contradict with "they are unsuitable for old PCs"?
You have entirely misunderstood or intentionally misconcepted my comment.
This seems more philosophical than on technicalities. If this is correct, would you mind elaborating on the philosophical side?
There is no philosophical side. I don't believe in them getting very major on desktops and laptops. That's it.
Even if this were the case, shouldn't the constant development and continuous improvement result in something that's (eventually) well-developed?
Yes but the hype should disappear a long time before it happens. And that's what I meant by the bubble. It's very hyped, misunderstood and misused thing now. It will go away and then immutable systems will find their niche or die out.
And advantages*. Or do you ignore those?
This looks like an attempt to start a fight or act like the aggressive part of the Nix community. I said immutable systems have advantages and disadvantages (in the next comment I think) but you either didn't read or decided to just fight instead.
This is false. What makes you think that?
Dual system partitions and Flatpaks are both not great for machines that use HDDs.
What's "them" in this sentence?
Old PCs.
Furthermore, if it is the "old PCs", doesn't this directly contradict with "they are unsuitable for old PCs"?
It doesn't because Nix doesn't have the just mentioned disadvantages of immutable systems. Idk why you misunderstood this but imo it seems suspicious of you.
Thank you for the quick reply!
There is no philosophical side. I don't believe in them getting very major on desktops and laptops. That's it.
Alright. Thanks for clarification. Does "getting very major" primarily apply to adoption rate amongst users? Or does it primarily take into account adoption rate amongst distros?
Yes but the hype should disappear a long time before it happens. And that's what I meant by the bubble. It's very hyped, misunderstood and misused thing now. It will go away and then immutable systems will find their niche or die out.
Clear. Thank you. In your view, how should they be understood and used?
I said immutable systems have advantages and disadvantages (in the next comment I think)
I saw the part about advantages right after. However, I also noticed how the first disadvantage was written without nuance. The set of disadvantages and advantages that followed right afterwards was accompanied with "for some" (or something like that IIRC^[1]^). Therefore, to me at least, it seemed as if you meant that there were disadvantages overall. But some of these disadvantages may be perceived as advantageous to some. Which, I thought was perhaps more in line with the general outlook of your comment. Or at least, my understanding of it*.
Dual system partitions and Flatpaks are both not great for machines that use HDDs.
HDDs in general are not great :P . But, "unsuitable" =/= "not great". So, this does not justify the (previous) usage of "unsuitable". So, do you still stand behind the earlier use of "unsuitable"?
Old PCs.
Thank you for another clarification!
It doesn't because Nix doesn't have the just mentioned disadvantages of immutable systems.
Interesting.
I just noticed that I read your "Nix" as "NixOS". Which is blameworthy*. Uhmm..., so I have to ask for some (more) clarifications then 😜. Did you strictly mean Nix; i.e. the package manager and/or language? Or NixOS? According to you, does NixOS fall into Nix; i.e. simply the system that's built on Nix?
This looks like an attempt to start a fight or act like the aggressive part of the Nix community.
but you either didn't read or decided to just fight instead.
Idk why you misunderstood this but imo it seems suspicious of you.
Fam. Chill. Please. I don't intend to antagonize or whatsoever 😅. Like, the (overwhelming) majority of my previous comment were queries for clarifications and questioned related to how I initially understood them. There's no need to make it more than that 😉.
All in all, thank you for clarifying and answering almost anything I asked. However, the following (I believe) still requires some attention:
Furthermore, like how do you reconcile this with Fedora’s ambitions for Fedora Atomic?
To clarify, from my understanding, it seems you regard/view 'immutable distros' at best as some niche. Which, to be fair, is absolutely fine. And perhaps you're right; the future will tell. However, we know what Fedora intends for 2028; i.e. users of Fedora Atomic (and related 'immutable' projects led by Fedora) would constitute the majority of its user base. Furthermore, they've spoken since 2021 (IIRC) that Fedora Atomic (so likely Fedora Silverblue) will eventually become what people will install for Fedora Workstation. So, their ambition is clear. And their ambition contradicts with how you view it. How do you reconcile this with the fact that other distros (more often than not) join Fedora into whatever direction they depart? Examples of this include systemd, PulseAudio, PipeWire and some might even mention Flatpak and Wayland here.
OMG that's a lot of comment lol. My brain is gonna melt when typing a reply to THIS in English. But I guess I can try.
Does "getting very major" primarily apply to adoption rate amongst users? Or does it primarily take into account adoption rate amongst distros?
Amongst users. It's possible that every big and medium distro will have an immutable spin soon but it won't be too popular.
In your view, how should they be understood and used?
I'm sorry but expressing my opinion on it greatly increases the chance of running out of energy which will make my speech absolutely illogical and ridiculous.
I saw the part about advantages right after. However, I also noticed how the first disadvantage was written without nuance. The set of disadvantages and advantages that followed right afterwards was accompanied with "for some" (or something like that IIRC^[1]^). Therefore, to me at least, it seemed as if you meant that there were disadvantages overall. But some of these disadvantages may be perceived as advantageous to some. Which, I thought was perhaps more in line with the general outlook of your comment. Or at least, my understanding of it*.
My brain always returns an "out of memory" error of the if/else solving module if I try to feed it this part so sorry if my response isn't complete. I indeed made it look like the features of immutable distros are disadvantages to more people than they are advantages to. This is my opinion which might be biased since immutability goes totally against my workflow and the workflows I make for other people.
But, "unsuitable" =/= "not great". So, this does not justify the (previous) usage of "unsuitable". So, do you still stand behind the earlier use of "unsuitable"?
Worse for = not meant for; not meant for = unsuitable imo because there are just better options; this leads to worse = unsuitable. Maybe not completely unsuitable but at least definitely not good for.
Thank you for another clarification!
You are welcome and thank you for not being toxic like at least approximately 2/3 of people on Lemmy (according to my not-so-accurate research).
I just noticed that I read your "Nix" as "NixOS". Which is blameworthy*. Uhmm..., so I have to ask for some (more) clarifications then 😜. Did you strictly mean Nix; i.e. the package manager and/or language? Or NixOS? According to you, does NixOS fall into Nix; i.e. simply the system that's built on Nix?
Ok listen idk much about Nix ecosystem/infrastructure. I meant NixOS here. Sorry for the confusion. The habit of not including the "OS" ending comes from the Android community.
Fam. Chill. Please. I don't intend to antagonize or whatsoever 😅. Like, the (overwhelming) majority of my previous comment were queries for clarifications and questioned related to how I initially understood them. There's no need to make it more than that 😉.
I'm sorry, mister/miss. My attitude to the society, people in general and Lemmy users is negative and suspicious by default. I have my reasons and, no matter how controversial it is, I'm not going to change it. Most of the people by far are bad and toxic so it's ok to make this assumption the default. Again I'm sorry that this my assumption caused inconvenience for you.
To clarify, from my understanding, it seems you regard/view 'immutable distros' at best as some niche. Which, to be fair, is absolutely fine.
It may not be a small niche but everything has a niche (even X11, Wayland, GNOME and Windows 10) so immutable distros can have a big one or a small one. As you said, future will tell. I don't see them getting a large (more than 10-20% desktop Linux users) niche any time soon.
How do you reconcile this with the fact that other distros (more often than not) join Fedora into whatever direction they depart?
I don't think it's the case or at least I don't have any information on it. Fedora just tries making new and very perspective stuff the first and the stuff always succeeded in the past. In the case of immutable distros, I feel like it's gonna be some nice to watch chaos because new users will have to understand how to disable immutability to install drivers and fixes which means much more research (because most answers will just say "disable immutability for the directories that the fix needs" and the user will have no idea of any of that) and terminal commands. At the same time, immutable systems may be less suitable for advanced users who like tinkering. This makes a huge part of the Linux user base. Then I can say "told you" with pride. Though immutable distros are great for cases when the system must be limited to a certain task(s). On the desktop it's the enterprise usage but idk how many % they are. I think it's in the single digits.
Also we're searching for the Lemmy's comment length limit with these ones!!!
Excellent reply! I appreciate it.
OMG that's a lot of comment lol. My brain is gonna melt when typing a reply to THIS in English. But I guess I can try.
Yeah lol. I'm sure we'll (somehow) manage.
Amongst users. It's possible that every big and medium distro will have an immutable spin soon but it won't be too popular.
Aight. Thanks for (yet) another clarification. I obviously think that 'immutable' distros will heavily influence the future of Linux. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if all big distros will default to becoming 'immutable'. However, that version of an 'immutable' distro may not exist yet. FWIW, it's also (somewhat) in-line with Lennart Poettering's vision.
I'm sorry but expressing my opinion on it greatly increases the chance of running out of energy which will make my speech absolutely illogical and ridiculous.
If anything, I'd love to read this. So please, whenever you feel like it, consider returning back on this.
I indeed made it look like the features of immutable distros are disadvantages to more people than they are advantages to. This is my opinion which might be biased since immutability goes totally against my workflow and the workflows I make for other people.
Fair. If it isn't too much of a trouble, could you elaborate on your workflow? Like, are you constantly installing new stuff?
Worse for = not meant for; not meant for = unsuitable imo because there are just better options; this leads to worse = unsuitable. Maybe not completely unsuitable but at least definitely not good for.
I implore you to use other words going forward 😜. Perhaps I'm wrong, but to me, this seems like an example in which your 'bias' seeps through.
Ok listen idk much about Nix ecosystem/infrastructure. I meant NixOS here. Sorry for the confusion. The habit of not including the "OS" ending comes from the Android community.
Don't worry about the confusion 😉. But thanks for your consideration! However, if I understood you correctly, this implies that you don't consider NixOS an 'immutable' distro. Or at least not representative of 'immutable' distros. If this assumption is correct, could you elaborate on why you think that's the case?
I'm sorry, mister/miss. My attitude to the society, people in general and Lemmy users is negative and suspicious by default. I have my reasons and, no matter how controversial it is, I'm not going to change it. Most of the people by far are bad and toxic so it's ok to make this assumption the default. Again I'm sorry that this my assumption caused inconvenience for you.
No worries, fam. Again, I appreciate your consideration!
It may not be a small niche but everything has a niche (even X11, Wayland, GNOME and Windows 10) so immutable distros can have a big one or a small one. As you said, future will tell. I don't see them getting a large (more than 10-20% desktop Linux users) niche any time soon.
Interesting notion on niche. Which I don't think is necessary unjustified*. Though I am having a hard time coming up with a definition to how I understood your understanding. I initially thought of "everything that's not (necessarily) mainstream". But if you mention Windows 10 as an example, then that can't be it. Perhaps "use" or "preference"? Could you (perhaps) define what you mean with "niche"?
I don't think it's the case or at least I don't have any information on it.
Thanks for being transparent! Consider looking into the earlier given examples. Perhaps it's even noteworthy to name some of the competitors that have perished against the alternative: Wayland vs Mir, systemd vs Upstart, Flatpak vs Snap etc.
Fedora just tries making new and very perspective stuff the first and the stuff always succeeded in the past.
Interesting. So, do you pose (as an alternative) that merely the successful is adopted? So they didn't necessarily follow whatever Fedora did, but Fedora just happened to be on the winning team. Hence, the winner takes all.
Btw, what do you mean with "very perspective stuff"?
In the case of immutable distros, I feel like it's gonna be some nice to watch chaos because new users will have to understand how to disable immutability to install drivers and fixes
On what 'immutable distros' is 'immutability' disabled for installing drivers? I don't recall the last time "disabling immutability" was mentioned within the discourse for a legitimate reason or fix. At best, some people that don't know how specific changes are meant to be applied on the specific distro they use, succumb to the infamous XY problem and try to do stuff the wrong way. But this is not a problem found exclusively on 'immutable' distros.
which means much more research (because most answers will just say "disable immutability for the directories that the fix needs" and the user will have no idea of any of that) and terminal commands.
Honestly, I have never encountered this. I don't know where you get this idea from. I feel like you might have fundamentally misunderstood how (most) 'immutable' distros work. If possible, could you provide a link or anything in which that proposed solution is indeed mentioned most when tackling a specific problem found on an 'immutable distro'?
Btw, I'm open to the notion that I completely misunderstood what you're saying here. Therefore, if possible, could you mention your notion of what "disable immutability" entails. Like, how does that even work on something like e.g. Fedora Atomic?
At the same time, immutable systems may be less suitable for advanced users who like tinkering.
It depends. Some advanced users actually love the reproducible aspect that comes with (most) 'immutable' distros, because this enables them to tinker to their heart's content without being afraid of losing a working system.
This makes a huge part of the Linux user base.
While I wouldn't be surprised if this has been the case for the longest time, I do think that as Linux successfully attracts an ever bigger crowd, that eventually a huge part of the Linux user base will consist of normies. And, as it stands, I can only see them go for stable (by release cycle) distros or 'immutable' distros unless some other drastic changes happen in the mean time that enables your Average Joe to run a (semi-)rolling release distro without troubles.
Doesnt matter because all the board members could quit and nixOS community can update the config and rebuild.
There's some decent forks currently so I wouldn't worry about the technology, but yeah the organisation is probably going to implode and reorg soon
NixOS not the major inspiration for immutables, consumer OSes like Android and ChromeOS are. But yes, NixOS has some influence even it don't get the idea of immutable distros well.
NixOS not the major inspiration for immutables
Do you mean strictly mean 'immutable' distros with this?
consumer OSes like Android and ChromeOS are.
So, if I understood you correct, you pose that Android and ChromeOS are the major inspiration for 'immutable distros'. Which, to be fair, could be true. Uhmm..., a quick search didn't result on any conclusive evidence of this. If you will, could you perhaps help me find with sources that back up this claim?
But yes, NixOS has some influence even it don’t get the idea of immutable distros well.
Sorry, I don't understand this sentence. Could you explain what you meant here?
Yeah, Android ain't an immutible distro wtf
the recent influx of so-called 'immutable' distros springing up like mushrooms is undeniably linked to and inspired by NixOS.
This is the usual (only?) solution - the idea forks or inspires a different community to take it further.
There's usually no fixing a toxic person / community in either real life or online.
Eelco stepped down
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