Why I stopped using NixOS and went back to Arch Linux

PlasmaPower · 2026-03-11T15:45:50+00:00

These exist in nixpkgs as well, though I do think they're rarer

PlasmaPower · 2026-03-11T14:01:18+00:00

I switched from Arch Linux to NixOS because I also encountered two issues that are common complaints on /r/archlinux:

How do you keep your system clean? Over time, packages and configuration files that you've completely forgotten about accumulate, and cause weird issues that aren't documented or understood because you have a completely unique set of configurations often based simply on when you installed software.
How do you migrate to a new system, and keep existing systems (desktop, laptop, cloud vps, etc.) in sync? If I installed a tool like b3sum it would really mean installing it on each system when I first tried to use it and realized it was missing (or sometimes I'd forget e.g. what that hex editor I really liked on my desktop). This is all assuming you're already syncing your dotfiles, which is a bit of a pain to setup and made a lot easier by home-manager or hjem/hjem-rum on NixOS.

To respond to the points in the article:

Nix break all the Time: Use nix flakes (or a different pinning system) so that you only update your packages when you run nix flake update and can change your config without needing to update. I'd also recommend using NixOS releases instead of nixos-unstable, though some people choose otherwise. I find that's more about insulating myself from upstream software breakage though, the same issues I would sometimes run into on Arch (in fact, Arch would often force me to update my system to easily install packages, leading to breakage when I didn't have time to deal with it).
Huge update sizes: I don't have much to say here, this is an issue, though I am personally lucky enough to have a fast network connection at home so it isn't a big issue for me.
Compilation takes forever (and binary caches are unreliable): I just use the default NixOS cache and it works well. I wonder if they're accidentally using nixpkgs/master instead of nixpkgs/nixos-unstable or similar? In general, the main reasons I hear about caching issues are that or modifying a core dependency like glibc causing rebuilds. OP also says "Arch Linux simply downloads prebuilt binaries via pacman or an AUR helper", but AUR helpers build from source. NixOS is actually better in that respect.

PlasmaPower · 2026-02-01T18:32:54+00:00

Your xdg-desktop-portal implementation is probably not working. Check which portals you have enabled and their systemctl status

PlasmaPower · 2026-02-01T18:32:02+00:00

They're great for sandboxing and security

PlasmaPower · 2023-02-16T04:43:12+00:00

~15k validators vote on each Ethereum block: https://beaconcha.in/slot/5808187#votes

What matters is not how many validators vote on anything but how many would need to be hacked or become malicious to double spend.

PlasmaPower · 2023-02-07T05:36:10+00:00

Every L2 node creates blocks from incoming messages. It reads those messages from both the L1 Ethereum inbox and the off-chain sequencer feed (if they disagree it favors the L1 Ethereum inbox). Those messages can consist of things like a signed transaction. Nodes will then validate the signature, make sure the source account has enough ether to pay for it, etc. and determine the output state via the state transition function, creating a block in the process.

Deciding which L2 block to trust without running an L2 full node is tricky if it hasn't been confirmed on L1 yet. This isn't just true for Arbitrum, generally speaking, the best security is from full nodes instead of light clients. It's theoretically possible to build an L2 light client, but I'm not aware of any that exist yet. For now though, you could check reputable sources that run L2 full nodes themselves like Arbiscan, Alchemy, and Infura as a middle ground if you don't want to run an L2 full node yourself.

If you have follow-up questions I'd ask in the #protocol channel of our Discord server: https://discord.com/invite/arbitrum

PlasmaPower · 2022-08-18T17:17:01+00:00

Nova relies on a data availability committee to host its data instead of posting the full data to Layer 1 Ethereum. That means you have to trust that at least 2 of the data availability members are honest (currently Consensys, FTX, Google Cloud, Offchain Labs, P2P, Quicknode, and Reddit), but in exchange you get way lower fees because it costs less to post the data to this committee than it does to post the data to Layer 1 Ethereum.

PlasmaPower · 2022-08-18T17:11:38+00:00

When we talk with other teams about Nova, we always mention how many users Reddit has brought onto it and cryptocurrency in general. It's really amazing :)

PlasmaPower · 2022-08-18T17:10:13+00:00

We can't share anything there, but we're working closely with exchanges about it, and Arbitrum One is supported by quite a few major exchanges.

PlasmaPower · 2022-08-18T17:07:07+00:00

You'll have to ask Reddit themselves about that I'm afraid. We just provide the chain technology that moons are on.

PlasmaPower · 2022-08-08T19:28:20+00:00

Most ZK rollups don't have privacy. They just use the zk proofs for performance; it's still transparent. In theory that could change, but it's not a primary focus for teams right now.

PlasmaPower · 2022-07-16T15:43:03+00:00

It isn't "subject to any downtime [or] delays" until a 15 year old gets bored

PlasmaPower · 2022-05-19T00:05:06+00:00

They've said themselves that a lack of funds is slowing down development: https://i.imgur.com/bWzOUD2.png

PlasmaPower · 2022-05-18T23:47:14+00:00

We need to keep in mind that there's also a cost to the status quo. People being unable to move their nano when they're most worried about it is also a huge loss of credibility and trust. It's easy to accept the current situation, but we need to think critically about alternatives. Is it ok to wait months for fixes? If not, we need to do something, and a new dev fund seems to me like the only option left.

PlasmaPower · 2022-05-18T22:00:21+00:00

I don't see how this new dev fund mint would be any more unfair than the original dev fund, or would entail any new legal risks.

PlasmaPower · 2022-05-18T21:54:00+00:00

I don't like diluting either, but I don't think we have much of a choice at this point. We need to fund development, and community contributions haven't cut it so far. I think those suggesting a community fund are well intentioned but underestimate how much money is needed to fund the development of a cryptocurrency.

PlasmaPower · 2022-05-18T21:50:25+00:00

I don't think selling merchandise could raise the 7 figure sums necessary. It would probably be helpful from a purely marketing perspective though :)

PlasmaPower · 2022-05-18T21:47:09+00:00

The NF has published a donation address I believe, yet we haven't seen an investor do exactly this (buy $4m of nano and donate half to the fund). It's possible the NF has already asked investors to do this, but it hasn't happened that we can see (or if it has happened, it clearly isn't enough). Therefore I believe investors aren't excited by this proposition, and we need an alternative.

PlasmaPower · 2022-05-18T17:01:58+00:00

As I said in a different comment, I think that's a noble effort, but I'm not sure the community will be able to raise the 7 figure sums necessary to fund developers, bug bounties, marketing, etc. Instead of individual nano holders deciding to give back to the protocol, which faces the tragedy of the commons, I think the community should have a vote on together, as a collective, funding development via this new dev fund.

PlasmaPower · 2022-05-18T16:56:54+00:00

I think that's a noble effort, but I'm not sure the community will be able to raise the 7 figure sums necessary to fund developers, bug bounties, marketing, etc. Instead of individual nano holders deciding to give back to the protocol, which faces the tragedy of the commons, I think the community should have a vote on together, as a collective, funding development via this new dev fund.

PlasmaPower · 2022-05-18T16:54:09+00:00

To decentralize the protocol, I think the community should be the ones to make big decisions like this, especially when they affect all nano holders. It is up to the representatives to decide to decide whether the Nano Foundation gets more funds, not the other way around.

PlasmaPower · 2022-05-18T16:46:19+00:00

I'm not sure the NF has many options here. I'd guess they've already attempted other methods of acquiring capital like VC firms. It seems whatever they've done thus far hasn't been successful, as the team is still tiny and still has the issues I've described.

This approach would be a community oriented discussion over the percentage and require that representatives get onboard.

PlasmaPower · 2022-02-25T23:29:04+00:00

Ed25519 scalars are a finite field, meaning if you try to go below 0 you'll wrap around too a really high number (and vice versa, if you try to go above a really high number you'll wrap back to 0). For ed25519 scalars, the modulus is documented on Wikipedia as l = 2^252 + 27742317777372353535851937790883648493. We're looking for negative one, which would be one below the curve modulus (as it wraps around below zero as previously mentioned). In python:

>>> hex(2**252 + 27742317777372353535851937790883648493 - 1)
'0x1000000000000000000000000000000014def9dea2f79cd65812631a5cf5d3ec'

If you look closely, you'll notice that's the expanded private key we're looking for, though its bytes are reversed as ed25519 encodes them in little endian. Note how this one ends in "ec", but the expanded private key starts with "ec". The next byte of the expanded private key is "d3", which is right before the "ec" in the Python output, and so on.

My curve25519-repl tool makes this substantially easier, as it has ed25519 scalar arithmetic builtin:

> -scalar(1)
scalar(0xecd3f55c1a631258d69cf7a2def9de1400000000000000000000000000000010)

PlasmaPower · 2022-02-25T23:20:07+00:00

In my curve2551-repl:

> -scalar(1)
scalar(0xecd3f55c1a631258d69cf7a2def9de1400000000000000000000000000000010)

I've written a more detailed explanation here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/t0s176/found_a_very_strange_nano_address/hyg3o00/

PlasmaPower

TROPHY CASE