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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.
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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.
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.
That's true. That's what I've been seeing in places, people just saying to continue on and ignore the drama. And I know I shouldn't let a group idea/thing dictate whether I use nix but like I was already starting to not like how it seemed like a lot of people were like "write all your stuff in nix (configs, etc)" and I didn't want to get locked in. Plus I got busy and didn't feel like tinkering with it. Idk. I was already losing interest in a weird way. I still think immutable/reproducible distros are cool though. I'm now just currently running Guix on top of arch and using aconfmgr to emulate some reproducibility.
NixOS is never going mainstream. When the answer to everything is oh just write a package for it. Unless their is a nice gui to edit your configuration file also it well always be niche.
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.
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.
If you think that’s a military take over. Don’t look under the rug of Linux/foss at large.
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.
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!
Is Nix really so important to the world that it needs a constitutional assembly, a board of directors, and general elections?
I always gathered that it was a niche project within the niche of Linux distro projects.
Is it a bunch of people playing out a company governance fantasy or is it actually a large, well valued company? I think that the vast majority of people wouldn't even be able to make an informed voting decision.
I am also quite out of the loop I feel...
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.
Thanks for posting. I was unaware of current events. That's quite the rabbit hole!
Doesnt matter because all the board members could quit and nixOS community can update the config and rebuild.
Are Nixos configurations compatible with this one?
As far as I can tell, they are 100% different. Guix uses Guile Scheme, NixOS uses the custom Nix language.
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
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