juipeltje

If i remember correctly you can pass a txt file to pacman when installing packages, but i could be wrong. There is also BlendOS, which from what i can tell has an immutable base, with a toml config on top of it to install the additional packages you want. Never tried it myself though. I also use NixOS because i wanted to be able to reproduce my riced out system more easily if i have to reinstall. I do wish this space had some more competition, because it might make this way of running a distro more approachable. The closest thing i’ve seen aside from guix is probably those ublue customized images that you can build, but i’m not sure how comparable that is.

If you prefer stacking then maybe wayfire is worth taking a look at. It’s a stacking compositor but it has eyecandy as well.

Ah i see. I also use NixOS but i don’t use any printers, so i don’t know much about that either.

Does fedora not have an option to run an LTS kernel or something, like arch does? That might help, unless you really need certain things that are only in the newer kernels.

Yeah like other people mentioned, guix is great but in terms of how it works it’s pretty much a libre lisp version of Nix, so you have to actually be interested in that type of system where you configure everything declaritively through a programming language. I personally use NixOS because i’m not really into the libre stuff, but i really love this way of configuring my system, but be prepared to spend months on learning and configuring depending on how far you want to take it. I don’t know much about parabola, but if i’m not mistaken i thought it was similar to arch but libre, so it might be a better fit if you just want to use a more traditional linux distro that is also libre.

I initially tried linux mint and ubuntu when i was like 13 on my laptop, which is almost 15 years ago now. At the time it wasn’t because i hated windows, but my monkey brain was just interested in it because it looked so much different. After i realized that i couldn’t just use all my windows programs like usual (and especially gaming wasn’t nearly as good back then), i quickly went back to windows. Fast forward to 2020, at this point i had started disliking windows mainly because all of it’s creepy questions when you install it, like wanting your handwriting information and all that, but at the same time i thought “well what can you do about it?”. Then i saw the LinusTechTips video about trying linux instead of windows 11. This was the first time i had actually thought of linux again in all those years. The video convinced me to give it a try and i started with PopOS. After a few months i moved to arch cause i liked the idea of customizing my distro more from the ground up. Stayed with arch for 2 years, then i got the distro hop virus. Tried a lot of them, fedora, opensuse, ended up staying on Void linux for over a year in total. Now i’m using NixOS and very happy with it, and i think i’m finally settling down on a distro. I know LTT gets a lot of flack for how they handled the linux challenge, but if it wasn’t for that initial video back in 2020, i would have probably never given linux another try. And with valve investing so much into improving wine and dxvk and all that, it was viable for me to switch as a gamer.

You must be a mac user then because it doesn’t make any sense to have that criticism as a windows user lmao

Pretty sure it’s mice for both, that’s just the correct plural for mouse, and the computer mouse literally got it’s name from the animal.

If you’re not afraid to dive straight into minimalism/command line, void linux could be a good choice, especially if the laptop is 32bit because void still has 32bit repos.

I would say willingness to learn and to compromise. And by compromise i’m mainly talking about trying to find alternatives to software that might not exist on linux, and see if those work for you. And if you end up finding a piece of software you need that really has no good alternative to what you need, you can always either go the virtual machine route, or the dualboot route, but i personally think that should be considered a last resort.

Yeah, i’m realizing more and more how convenient those variables are. I recently started using gtklock for example, a screenlocker that also has separate modules for extra functionality, which are also in nixpkgs, but the problem is that you have to explicitly specify the path to those modules in the config. So i wrote the config inside of home manager, and pointed to the modules path with the pkgs.foo variables. Worked like a charm.

I use NixOS, it appealed to me because i got to a point where i liked minimal distros like arch and void and i could build them up exactly the way i like them to be, however i didn’t like how i would have to go through that whole process again if i wanted to do a reinstall. With NixOS i can still craft my OS the way i like it, with the benefit of it being saved as a config, and easy to restore. I did make my own post-install script for void but NixOS is a more solid solution compared to my own janky script. I’m hoping to finally settle down on this distro. I guess the upside to the huge learning curve with nix is that it’s a good motivator to not abandon it because it would feel like my efforts to learn it would go to waste lol.

I think nix being slang for nichts is a coincidence, because it actually comes from the dutch word “niks”, which also means nothing. I think this is mentioned on the NixOS website somewhere.

Fair enough. I wasn’t aware you actually had that problem yourself, i thought you just looked it up to prove a point lol. I do think it’s a weird decision that niri doesn’t just have xwayland built-in. Even river has native xwayland support, which is much more focused on minimalism. I haven’t used niri all that much because so far haven’t really been able to get used to scrolling. I think i still prefer dynamic tilers with a layout system. I should probably try booting up a game in niri to see if i can replicate it.

I think it does work, but from my understanding when nested inside another wayland session, thing like vrr don’t work, which brings me back to the xorg problem, but my current workaround works for me, so now it’s just a matter of hoping it will improve and become less tedious.

Issue is already closed though and might have more to do with xwayland itself it seems. Also fwiw, i just tested steam on niri with xwayland-satellite a few weeks ago and it worked just fine.

Yeah it’s at the point where i’m wondering if i still even need xorg. I’m still keeping it around just in case for now, but i could very easily purge it from my system anytime since i’m using nixos and all my xorg related settings are in a specific file. The main pet peeve i have with wayland is gaming related, and should hopefully improve when wine and proton go native wayland. I have a dual monitor setup and games always choose the wrong monitor by default, which means i can only use the resolution and refreshrate of the secondary monitor. I have a keybind to set the primary xwayland monitor with xrandr, which solves the problem, but it is a bit hacky. I also need to toggle vrr on and off with a keybind because it causes flickering on my monitor. It’s a bit annoying but atleast it works, on xorg you can’t even use vrr with multi monitor to begin with.

What’s wrong about that statement? Try installing SteamOS on Nvidia hardware and tell me how it went ;) why do you think Bazzite exists in the first place? SteamOS in it’s current state is not meant to be installed on other hardware, it’s a recovery image for the deck. Sure, if you have compatible AMD hardware you COULD do it, but you can’t even choose which drive to install it on cause there is no proper installer. If you want the SteamOS experience on other devices just use Bazzite.

I wonder what distrotube is going to use from now on since he’s an arcolinux user. He recently made a video about turning dtos into an installscript bundled with a base arch iso, maybe he’ll use that?

I’m not sure if they still are, but yeah i think they were made by sapphire as well. My vega was specifically a nitro+ though, so not a reference design.