I have always been discovering new things about Linux distros while distro hopping. And when I get something I really like, I just copy the package name and make sure I install it in every distro I use in the future.

Let me start:

  1. Clipboard manager (Gpaste)
  2. KDE connect
  •  lhotze   ( @lhotze@lemmy.ml ) 
    15•1 year ago

    Everything NixOS (https://nixos.org) does. I am 99% sure that if anyone tries it out and gets comfortable with it they will never change again.

    • Your configuration is written in code, it is therefore persistent. Do you know that annoying feeling of “oh shit, how did I configure x program that I want to install on this other machine”? Never again.
    • You can wipe your machine and recover your config in no time. I have 3 machines working with the same config except for small variations. If I change the command to take a screenshot it changes in all of them. If I change my firefox bookmarks it is persisted accross them too. Its awesome.
    • NixOS generates revisions of your config automatically. Ifyou change something and it breaks you can always use a previous version of your system that you know works to fix it.
    • The Nix package repository is the largest (by far) in all the linux ecosystem. And, even if a package you want is missing, adding it yourself is not that hard.

    I am probably missing other nice things, but those are awesome already. It’s true that the learning curve it a bit steeper than usual, but there is no distro quite like it and even for non coders you can get a lot out of it.

    •  Jerald   ( @Owell1984@lemmy.ml ) OP
      3•1 year ago

      undefined> Your configuration is written in code, it is therefore persistent. Do you know that annoying feeling of “oh shit, how did I configure x program that I want to install on this other machine”? Never again.

      This is sick! thank you!

    •  dotCaffe   ( @yaru@slrpnk.net ) 
      2•1 year ago

      Nix has been on my mind for a while, but I’ve been hesitant to go all in. Unfortunately, messing around a bit with VMs I still don’t feel like I have a good handle on how it all works.

      One question I’d ask you is how much upfront work it is to get, say, a stable setup for a laptop where all of the little things are working (opening/closing the lid, connecting to external screen, switching audio outputs, media keys. Laptop stuff!)

      As context, a long time ago I ran Gentoo and later Arch, so I’m not technically clueless, but eventually decided to switch to easier distros that came with a reasonable system defaults that works out of the box. I’m super interested in NixOS for all the reasons you mentioned, but worried about how time I’ll end up spending just getting that config file to where I want it!

      •  lhotze   ( @lhotze@lemmy.ml ) 
        1•1 year ago

        The stable setup on the laptop you can get by using a DE like Gnome that comes with batteries included. If you go for more minimal setups like a window manager it will take quite a bit longer. NixOS as a distribution is pretty easy to get running, if you are familiar with the desktop environment that you install in your system getting it setup is much much simpler than doing so in other distros like Arch, since it usually consists of adding a line like desktopEnvironment.gnome.enable = true to your config and the system takes care of almost everything. I even think that gnome gets installed by default on the first run.

        •  dotCaffe   ( @yaru@slrpnk.net ) 
          1•1 year ago

          Thanks! I ended up messing with Nixos a bunch in the past few weeks. My impression is generally positive, though while many of the things it does are very elegant (like the gnome example you mentioned), a lot of it also seems a bit hacky. Ultimately, figuring out how to declaratively configure specific things seems to take so much more time than my current approach of a written document detailing the steps of setting up my system.

          I’m going to keep tinkering in a VM though, and maybe I’ll have a breakthrough. Keeping configs working across two computers especially is tempting (read: an excuse to get a second computer).

          One last question - one of the things I worked on was Firefox with home manager. How did you get it set up so bookmarks were included in the config?

          •  lhotze   ( @lhotze@lemmy.ml ) 
            2•1 year ago

            When you set a FF profile there is a key called bookmarks. You can set them there:

            programs.firefox = {
  enable = true;
  extensions = [
    pkgs.nur.repos.rycee.firefox-addons.vimium
    ...
  ];
  profiles = {
    my-profile = {
      name = "yourname";
      settings = {};
      bookmarks = [
         {
           name = "This is a folder";
           toolbar = true;
           bookmarks = [
             {
               name = "You can nest folders";
               bookmarks = [
                 {
                   name = "This is a lemmy bookmark";
                   keyword = "lemmy";
                   url = "https://lemmy.ml/";
                 }
            ...
        ];
      ];
    };
  };
};

            You can always look at the home manager reference, I usually look here.

  •  Ephera   ( @Ephera@lemmy.ml ) English
    12•1 year ago

    BTRFS snapshots like openSUSE and now also Fedora has it. I don’t want to use a distro without them anymore. Unfortunately, configuring them yourself is a bit more involved than just installing a package…

  •  russjr08   ( @russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net ) English
    7•1 year ago

    I’d probably say the vast amount of packages that can be installed via the AUR, but since the rising popularity of Flatpak, we’re getting incredibly close to this.

    My next want would be having the ability to make your system declarative (at least, the initial config) in a fashion that NixOS and Guix do.

    •  𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍   ( @sxan@midwest.social ) English
      2•1 year ago

      I have really come to depend on rolling-release systems. I have a few alliances that run Ubuntu, because of a dependency on vendor packages and insufficient interest in fighting with software+hardware issues, and I hate when I have to deal with them. The paupacy of software, the frequent breakage on release upgrades; I don’t know how people who prefer these systems justify how bad they are in comparison to Arch (or Nix, or any other rolling release-based distro).

      I haven’t yet done it, but Arch is so reliable I’m tempted to create a daily -Syu cron job (or, more precisely, a systemd timer job, because I’m only yet running Artix on a couple of systems). The only thing that gives me pause are the kernel updates, which are frequency and necessitate system reboots.

      Those kernel updates really make me wish Linus had focused on a microkernel architecture.

  •  Vorthas   ( @Vorthas@lemmy.ml ) 
    2•1 year ago

    I would say AUR access with either Xfce or MATE as a default and first-class option for DEs. It’s hard to go to a distro without AUR access for a lot of what I use, doable, but hard.