• 3 Posts
  • 33 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • You are running fedora which is using the dnf package manager. The commands you mentioned (apt/ppa) are part of the apt (aptitude) package manager which is comes with Ubuntu.

    Apt is the command to install/manage packages on Ubuntu (and other distros that use apt). A ppa is a special way to tell apt where it can download packages from. It lets you a install 3rd party packages not provided by your distros default selection. It is specific to apt and will not work for dnf.

    This isn’t the end of the world and you can still install the package. Because these packages are open source, you can build the package from source. The instructions for which can be found on the github readme. Hopefully this cleared some things up!

    [Edit] done some poking around, and I managed to get it running on fedora. I had weird issues building it from scratch, so I did it in a janky way by downloading and extracting the deb (it had precompiled bin inside). Looks to be working tho I couldn’t test it because no qemu




  • I think both nix-env and flakes are designed with making package management easier. Nix-env tries to make it intuitive and familiar for new users. Flakes improve package management by simplifying the configuration.

    Personally I would love to see syntax highlighting, language server, code completion. Maybe all in a dedicated application which is configured to give the easiest experience for new users. If nix is intended to be managed through config files, then the experience of writing a config should be as easy as possible.



  • Oh that’s good that they are addressing those issues with a new command. Hopefully it gets into stable soon.

    Might be that nix-env -iA is bad practice! I’m strictly talking about ux design here and nix-env -iA is being recommend by blogs and nix themselves. (Nixpkgs tells you how to install using nix-env -iA)

    A new user isn’t going to know what bad practice is.


  • What’s up with the ux design of nix? I get it’s made for advanced users but still. I’m reading through this guide and man it’s convoluted.

    The different ways of installing packages. Either through editing the configuration.nix or running a command. The weird inconsistency of nix commands. nix-env -iA to install and nix-env --uninstall to uninstall. Then updating uses nix-channel --update but upgrade uses nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade. All this to use the package manager. Also haven’t even mentioned flakes or home manager.

    It’s a cool OS, but the UX really needs work imo.

    [Edit] I do wanna add something else too because I feel like my point isn’t getting across.

    It’s okay to have a complicated ui. Especially if your target audience are tech-savvy. But even tech-savvy people have to start as new users. A tech-savvy new user isn’t going to know what the best practices are. Being able to anticipate the steps for installing a package is important for ux. If the commands for installing packages isn’t cohesive/intuitive, then the user has to spend more time looking for guides and learning how to use the software.

    People also mentioned a new command in the works. This is great! However, these current commands are being recommended through blogs and nix. New users won’t know about this new command.




  • Not sure why people are downvoting this person. They aren’t wrong that Linux enthusiast threads can make it scary for new users to try Linux out. Unfortunately, I did want to see what Linux enthusiasts are running and why they picked it, which is why I made this thread.

    If you are a new user trying to get into Linux, I wouldn’t recommend some suggestions in this thread as advice for picking a distro. When I was getting into Linux, I attempted to go straight into DWM/arch because another Linux enthusiast thread said it was great. Needless to say, I had a terrible time.

    It doesn’t actually matter distro what you pick, so long as you have fun with it and it is useable! :)