Hi everyone!

I saw that NixOS is getting popularity recently. I really have no idea why and how this OS works. Can you guys help me understanding all of this ?

Thanks !

18 points
Removed by mod
permalink
report
reply
1 point

Do you use Nix, personally? Also, it’s crazy that I found this post while thinking about distro hopping.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

The above poster seems to use more ChatGPT than Nix, personally.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

I would love to have #4 on Arch / EndeavourOS.I recently had my Scribus install (SVN from the AUR) break due to Arch moving to some newer library. There really isn’t an easy way to solve this AFAIK.

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

this comment reads suspiciously like it was written by an LLM (eg ChatGPT). was it? please don’t do that!

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

Do LLMs give citations? Otherwise, I could agree.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Bing ‘chat mode’ (read: hooked GPT-4 to their search engine) does in essentially this format.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

Do LLMs give citations?

do they ever!

(The citations in this comment appear to be all real links about NixOS, but they are not particularly relevant to the places in the comment where they’re cited.)

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

I tried asking for sources before, and they were all wrong, either non-existant or not even about the topic, some were just random urls.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-2 points
*

@dessalines@lemmy.ml @AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml @wazowski@lemmy.ml @k_o_t@lemmy.ml @nutomic@lemmy.ml @kixiQu@lemmy.ml an admin is telling me not to use LLMs. Is this the official stance of this instance? If so, please let me know so I can find another instance and add it to the rules, if not please choose admins that actually enforce the instance rules without making them up.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points
*

thanks for clarifying. i’m deleting your generated comment per rule 4 (spamming) as well as two other generated comments you posted elsewhere; if another admin wants to undelete any of these i would be surprised.

please do not post LLM-generated comments without clearly labeling them as such. imo this is common sense, and doesn’t need its own rule, rule 4 is sufficient.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

You suck

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

I don’t know whether just using an LLM is a problem. But in your case I would say the fact you used one and didn’t indicate you did. If you indicated the answer came from an LLM, then the trust in the answer could be weighted accordingly by each user.

That’s my opinion at any rate.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Under the soon to be enacted EU AI laws such a bot would be limited-risk application (interaction with humans), the requirements for a text bot aren’t particularly high but also non-negotiable from a best practice POV: Stating front and centre that it’s an AI generated post. It’s also best practice to fulfil criteria necessary for high-risk systems voluntarily, the more you can fulfil I bet the less hostile people are going to be.

The library of congress has an executive summary of the thing.

(EU sources alas are a bit iffy at the moment there’s the commission version and the parliament amendments, haven’t seen a consolidated version yet. When will politicians start using proper VCS)

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

If OP wanted a response from an LLM, they would have typed their question into an LLM. The least you could do is label it as such.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points
*

The admins did not remove the comment, a community mod did. Mods can impose further restrictions on their communities on top of instance wide rules (within reason of course), including banning LLMs. Lemmy.ml at least does not have a blanket ban on LLMs, but generally it’s expected that, 1, you should not post LLMs excessively, we mainly want to host discussions by humans, 2, you should disclose it’s from an LLM and which one it’s from, and preferably add to what it says with your own comments or analysis. If it’s a mix of LLM and your own writing, say so at the start of the comment, but if the community directly disallows LLMs then you shouldn’t post it there at all.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

This is clearly a chatgpt post that you made references for

permalink
report
parent
reply
22 points

everyone

Now that’s what I’d call a stretch…

permalink
report
reply

I’ll edit. That was clearly a stretch

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

Indeed, why would I switch, already have been running NixOS for 10+ years.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-2 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
reply
1 point

I will continue to use Arch btw…

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

I used NixOS for a couple of years. My experience is like this:

  1. It is a rolling release (mostly)
  2. You write a declarative configuration for your system, e.g., my config will say I want Neovim with certain plugins, and I can also include my Neovim configuration
  3. It is stable, and when it breaks it is easy to go back
  4. Packages are mostly bleeding edge
permalink
report
reply

The configuration stuff seems great. I guess it reduce the struggle of porting a full config from one pc to another right ?

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Yes absolutely. It is really great. It is also a source of frustration, e.g., missing configuration options, non-obvious options and so on. Overall it works well.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

You can even define configurations for different systems/hosts/users from a single place. I’ev atomized my config and I can reuse lots of parts for my different machines. Also my user config is nearly identical (except hardware specific things).

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Note that there’s both the rolling unstable channel and a bi-annual stable release channel.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Are you still using it and happy with it? I’ve been increasingly using single purpose dev VMs in a server, and a declarative configuration system would make the process of spinning them up faster and more robust. My current shell script system is clunky, and I’ve been looking at Ansible.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Not using it anymore. Although I’m thinking about going back to it. The NixOS learning curve is a bit more steep than most other distros.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

What are you using instead?

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Important to note that NixOS has both a rolling release and point release version.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-1 points

Wow, that sounds really cool (specially the config thing). I’ll have to try it sometime.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Because it’s the latest Cool Nerd Thing™ like Arch before it, and Gentoo before that. Most of the people raving about it probably don’t have much use for its features.

permalink
report
reply
1 point

Solution without a problem. A cool solution but yeah.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-1 points

I don’t think that’s accurate, personally.

Declarative orchestration systems have been around for years and have a very real use case when needing to stand up servers in a replicable way. Nix is applying that approach at the system level.

I’m not entirely sold on wanting to put that level of effort into a personal desktop, but I don’t think it’s at all fair to say that it’s not addressing real problems.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

The features themselves are very useful for basically any user. Whether they are worth the non-standardness and issues that come with it is another question.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

I’m using GNU Guix System which is similar to NixOS and I think I can safely say I do appreciate Guix’s features that set it apart from a traditional GNU/Linux distro or package manager.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Linux

!linux@lemmy.ml

Create post

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word “Linux” in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

  • Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
  • No misinformation
  • No NSFW content
  • No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

Community stats

  • 7.5K

    Monthly active users

  • 6.6K

    Posts

  • 179K

    Comments