• tomjuggler@lemmy.world
    7·
    3 hours ago

    I have this exact situation with my wife’s work laptop, which can’t upgrade to windows 11. The requirements are pretty simple, something that runs Chrome and Dropbox as well as Microsoft Office 2007.

    I’m going with Mint Cinnamon for her (I use arch & kde btw) - was pleasantly surprised to see Dropbox now has Linux support actually, haven’t looked at it for years!

    Almost everything she uses her computer for runs in Chrome.

    • lilith267@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      5·
      3 hours ago

      Alpine just feels like everything on my system is there for a reason (and somehow makes arch feel “bloated”) so I 100% understand wanting a full config file for everything on your system. But DAMN THE DOCS SUCK. Also NixOS locks you into systemd…

  • AZX3RIC@lemmy.world
    191·
    7 hours ago

    I have an old MacBook for 2012, can barely open terminal, installed Pop!_OS, and I love it!

    Am I a terrible person?

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        391·
        8 hours ago

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_From_Scratch

        Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a type of a Linux installation and the name of a book written by Gerard Beekmans, and as of May 2021, mainly maintained by Bruce Dubbs. The book gives readers instructions on how to build a Linux system from source. The book is available freely from the Linux From Scratch site.

        LWN.net reviewed LFS in 2004:[19]

        Linux From Scratch is a wonderful project. It should become a compulsory reading material for all Linux training courses, and something that every Linux enthusiast should complete at least once. This would also create another interesting side effect: people who tend to be quick in expressing dissatisfaction on the distributions’ mailing lists and forums would probably show a lot more respect for the developers. Installing a ready-made distribution is a trivial task. Building up a set of 4 CDs containing a stable, secure and reliable operating system, plus thousands of applications, is most definitely not.

  • madame_gaymes@programming.devEnglish
    34·
    9 hours ago

    I swear, I’ve only recommended it to one newbie, and they were an engineer! I had a reason!

    Hilarious that this is the new norm, though. NixOS is so not typical at all. Arch is more normal at this point.

    • Grenfur@lemm.eeEnglish
      37·
      9 hours ago

      What’s funny to me here is that, as a long time Arch user, I have been considering switching to NixOS. One of the most terrifying thoughts to me is that after using the same Arch install for 2 years I will spend ages trying to recreate it if I ever have to. Oh, that and Nix letting you test packages seems like a cool feature.

      • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
        3·
        2 hours ago

        The nice thing is that NixOS will keep your setup and all your tweaks if you ever need to reinstall. It’s designed to solve that exact problem.

        One way of switching over would be to carry over your homedir and just starting with migrating packages and config as a first step.

      • AugustWest@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        4 hours ago

        I am about to switch away from arch that I installed 5 years ago. It’s a daunting thought isn’t it?

      • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
        17·
        7 hours ago

        I’ve been on arch around a year now and also considered the jump to NixOS. I was actually dual booting it with arch for awhile and I found pretty quickly that the shit documentation was a huge turn off for me. I ended up nuking the nix partition and reclaiming it for arch.

        • Grenfur@lemm.eeEnglish
          18·
          6 hours ago

          This is my biggest issue. I am utterly spoiled to the exquisiteness that is Arch’s Wiki…

          • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
            2·
            2 hours ago

            I mean the Arch wiki mostly works on NixOS too. The problem with NixOS documentation is that there aren’t many examples for the Nix language itself.

        • traches@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          3 hours ago

          That and the need to learn a bespoke, weird programming language that will only ever be useful for this one thing have really turned me off of that distro.

  • MasterOKhan@lemmy.caEnglish
    12·
    8 hours ago

    Big nix fan here, I love being able to define my system from a couple configuration files and not scrounging around the file system for the right dot file

    • srestegosaurio@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      3·
      4 hours ago

      And also it let’s you do crazy things that would be impossible in other imperative distros tho.

      I am thinking about root-on-tmpfs, conditional configuration and doing all sorts of crazy things with packages while remaining manageable.

      It is simply another whole tier.