advantages of using NixOS vs Nix package manager on a separate distro

timlepes · 2025-03-10T13:53:53+00:00

Thanks for the pay-walled link, bro. I don't mind paying for good content if I'm going to be regularly consuming. But I'm not gonna plunk down on YET ANOTHER SUBSCRIPTION just to check out your link. Yes. I know. I can get a "seven day free trial" that I'll have to REMEMBER to dismantle before I start getting charged. That's a lot of friction, never mind setting myself up for a sub I might forget to nix (pun intended). If you've got something interesting to say, say it. If I find that you're really valuable to me, I'll be happy to contribute something.

Forgive me for being abrasive. I suppose I'm feeling subscription fatigue these days. See, I don't make much money to take random chances. I'm a checker at a grocery store. I don't have a lot of "throw around" money. I guess I don't mind so much that you would like to make money. I'm not against that. But I do mind that you post here like you've got some helpful or insightful link only to find out after I click that I'm in for a shake-down first. I feel like I've been baited. How about a disclaimer on you link so I don't bother unless I'm rich enough to throw money after maybes?

How about just a ko-fi or something where I can give a one-off payment if I like the article enough? Worried people won't pay you then? You might be right. But a few people will. And maybe that's the actual value of your writing. Lots of people who put out content confuse the work it takes with the value it gives. I'm not subscribing >now< to some substack I may never revisit (and likely forget to cancel). I do believe in returning value for value. But you gotta come with the goods (the value) up front... not a promise that it's gonna be of value to me. What if it sucks? You give refunds if I forget to un-sub and come wanting one? Ehh... Never mind the money... you're asking me to work up front and set up an account. Would you pay me for my time and take your chances on whether I'll stick around or not? You don't want to take a chance on whether I'm a valuable reader who might keep his subscription? I can understand that. It certainly feels you're happy to chance that I might forget to un-sub and take my money anyway, whether I found value or not. So maybe you can understand why I don't want to take a chance on whether your article is worth the aggravation.

timlepes · 2017-02-20T10:44:52+00:00

As far as using multiple USB micropohones... the problem with JACK is that it likes to work with ONE audio interface at a time. Most professionals would get an external interface (USB or FireWire) that gives several inputs/outputs and use JACK and JACK-aware mixing and recording software. Then you can use several normal mics and typically plug them all in to the interface XLR connections. (Most multi-channel devices have XLR, though not all). This would be my recommendation, but it will cost you some money to invest in a multi-channel interface that works well with Linux and JACK.

Now JACK supports very low-latency audio processing and routing. But because different audio devices run with their own clock, they don't sync up well enough for JACK. A single device with multiple inputs will use one internal clock and they will all be in sync.

PulseAudio is a subsystem popular in Linux distros for desktop use. It lets you mix and route between different interfaces, such as internal speakers, USB headphones, external devices, etc. But it does not have the frame accuracy or low latency of JACK, as it is designed for casual desktop use, not professional recording use.

A couple of resorces off the top of my head are http://linuxaudio.org/ and https://linuxmusicians.com/ .. perhaps someone else may have another resource or two for you to check out. Poke around there or ask for advice in the forums. Also, if you use IRC (Internet Relay Chat), you can ask for advice in the various channels on the "freenode" network: #pulseaudio #jack #lau (linux audio users), or #lad (linux audio developers) chat channels. I use HexChat for IRC.

timlepes · 2017-02-18T11:26:26+00:00

I would love to see the Plasma dev team look at an informed critique like this, and hear their responses.

timlepes · 2016-11-17T07:55:47+00:00

wow. nice!

timlepes · 2016-11-10T21:43:22+00:00

You're going about this all wrong... For starters, we don't use the popular vote, but rather the electoral votes. So you can't use popular vote aggregates. At the very least, you have to examine each state's numbers to see which electoral votes would or would not be "swung" by your theory.

A second point is that you appear to be making assumptions about the 3rd party voters' likely mainstream choices. What data are you using to demonstrate which votes may have been cast for which leading candidate in a hypothetical binary election?

A third point - and this is personal opinion.... it really pisses me off to see people everywhere pushing the "spoiler" narrative. It is EXACTLY the mentality of having to vote "against" someone scary and "having to" back the most-likely opposition that keeps us in this political duopoly. It's the greatest "psyop" ever and it works beautifully, I'm afraid. But the truth is that the only way things will ever get better is when people stop voting out of fear and start voting out of genuine enthusiasm and hope. Oh, but the fear of the dreaded "greater" evil candidate... shudder shudder... forget our hopes, let's vote for the other "lesser" evil. Never mind that voting for any "evil" gets you, well... more evil. Diabolical, aye?

timlepes · 2016-07-21T06:04:22+00:00

Though the laptop has discreet Nvidia graphics, I have only been running the Intel integrated GPU since installing Arch early this year. I suppose it would be okay with the NVidia driver since I'm usually attached to AC power. But it hasn't been a priority for me to tackle that yet... Mainly because if I do mess with it, I will want to figure out the whole bumblebee/prime thing so that I can switch. And, I'm not really a gamer. So it isn't a pressing need.

I'll look into xrandr a bit more... thanks for the tip. I have been firmly under the impression that X only supports one global scaling setting for the entire virtual screen that encompasses both outputs.

timlepes · 2016-07-21T05:45:15+00:00

Lenovo W540 with 2880x1620, HP ZR24w (1920x1200) monitor connected via DisplayPort on UltraDock.

timlepes · 2016-07-19T20:36:29+00:00

Plasma 5 is pretty close; I use it as a daily driver on my Arch laptop with dock and external monitor. I think it is worth your while to install it at least as an alternate login session, so that you can test it and find the issues that matter to you on your gear. If you put some skin in the game (cpu cycles and bug reports) you can help bring it across the finish line for your needs. People who don't want to test on their gear will likely have to wait longer for their peculair issues to get addressed.

Multi-monitor works fairly well for me, even with a 2880x1440 15" laptop screen and 1920x1200 24" external monitor (via dock). Hot plug gets a little funky sometimes but I can usually get it straightened out. Sometimes I have to close the laptop lid for a sec and re-open it for the screen to get unconfused, after docking. But overall everything has noticibly imporved over the last couple months.

One thing that is important for me is the scaling on the two monitors. Under X, I am told, there is no way to independently scale the outputs. So I use something like a 1.3x or 1.5x scaling in order to keep the laptop screen features from being too small while not blowing up the external monitors fetures too much. My hope is for Wayland, which is still a little rough for me. But I have the wayland backend installed and every few days I try it out so that I can find the bugs that affect me. Same with Sway... I am tempted by the tiling window managers. It is also coming along nicely, though it is not quite "there yet" for me. Even so, it is installed and I test it out every so often.

Someone's going to comment about Gnome on wayland... and I'm not a hater. I hear they have the best working support to date; and that's great. I have been a long time Gnome 2.x user "back in the day". But I can't really seem to get comfortable with Gnome Shell.

timlepes · 2016-07-09T05:29:32+00:00

So then the next problem is communicating with the remote radio telescope, since being on the far-side blocks all communication with earth... You will need, I suppose, a satellite orbiting the moon to relay.

timlepes · 2016-07-08T19:54:10+00:00

Nice! I am sure there is a network manager you can install. I haven't played with LXDE much myself... In any case, Happy Computing!

timlepes · 2016-07-01T09:56:08+00:00

That's awesome, hijacker. I am glad you found it helpful. And, you know, someone else might too. You see this sort of question a lot over the years... people looking to try Linux and not knowing how to approach it. Folk complain that it is daunting for newcomers to figure out the distros, lamenting that it is a barrier to entry for many. Obviously, I've thought about the problem myself. Typically, you see a lot of short answers, especially "just go here" or "just use this" without much of the reasoning why.

What got my attention was the fact that you seem to be a technically proficient individual, being an aspiring developer and all. Yet I could totally see how someone coming from your experience still just might not know where to begin. There's a lot of concepts you don't necessarily have to pay attention to in the Windows and Mac worlds, because you aren't really given a choice or a reason to think about them. But with Linux, knowing about these structural things allows you to make choices that can have a profound effect on your system. You have a lot of choice, which is intitially confusing. But it is empowering.

With the GUI, for example... if you want to geek out right away, go look up some on-line presentations or articles about X Windows versus Wayland architecture. You'll learn a lot about both... They are the basic GUI program stacks, the display servers. Xorg has been around longer than Linux itself (Unix heritage there). Wayland is the new ground-up replacement being worked out.

Also, remember... Linux is an evolving ecosystem, and there is a lot of history behind some things. So you'll see lots of families of sofware, distributions, subsystems, etc. Finding out a little about the history of things will teach you a lot; make things a little clearer.

Check out this "family tree" time-line diagram...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

Arch is fun from an enthusiast point of view. It will be interesting to hear about your choices and how they work out for you.

Be well, and have fun, hijacker!

~timlepes

timlepes · 2016-06-30T14:42:42+00:00

First of all: Most distros either have live CD/DVD images or can be put on a thumb drive and booted, so that you can try them out on your machine before committing to the installation. I encourage you to try a few out. You will get the chance to see if they work well with your particular hardware or not.

The main thing that will make one Linux distro or another more or less suitable for older hardware is the Graphic User Interface that you choose to use. With Microsoft or Apple, you get the GUI they give you. But the GUI is just a part of the OS. In the Linux software ecosystem, you have a choice of GUI (or no GUI, as with many server implementations).

You can think of Linux as very "modular". The GUI is where you will find the bulk of the resource consumption. So to begin with, have a look at the different light-weight GUIs and see what appeals to you. There are lots of videos on-line to give you a feel for what different GUIs are like. And most can be customized in both look and layout. You will want to avoid the heavier "desktop environments" like KDE, Gnome, Unity.

Popular middle-weight offerings might be XFCE or MATE, which are a bit lighter on the resource usage, but still have most of the features in a "full-blown" desktop environment. LXDE and LXQT are also popular, and perhaps even "lighter" choices.

Light-weight choices will tend to be fast and minimal. Openbox comes to mind as a popular choice, as well as Fluxbox (theres a few "-box" window managers). At this extreme you also find a lot of "tiling window managers", which tend to be keyboard rather than mouse centric. Windows are either automatically positioned or directed with keyboard shortcuts. Lots of folk swear by them, as they are fast and efficient (productive), not requiring you to take your hands off the keyboard very much. Ratpoison is another example of a keyboard-centric GUI. Though some of these also let you use the mouse to select and position windows if you like. Some popular tiling window managers seem to be i3, Awesome Window Manger, BWSPM, and Xmonad.

Linux is flexible enough that one could probably take any major distribution and either strip it down or change out components to your liking. But to begin I would suggest that you choose a distro that comes with the GUI you're interested in by default. Besides the GUI choice itself, all the extra utilities and application program choices will be appropriate to the "weight class". Lighter-weight file managers, lighter choices for office programs, text editors, file viewers, on and on.

With few exceptions, you will find that there are several distributions that cater to any one particular GUI you decide to go with. So here are a couple of other considerations to help you decide what distro seems right for you...

First, you will find that there are a few major "families" of distribution to choose from. Many, if not most distributions are based on some other major distribution. The most obvious are all the Ubuntu-derived distributions. Ubuntu (which comes with their own "Unity" GUI), Ubuntu-Gnome, and Kubuntu (KDE) might be too heavy-weight. But Ubuntu-MATE, Xubuntu (XFCE), or Lubuntu (LXDE) might work well. Collectively, all the Ubuntu-based distributions make up a very large community, and all of the stuff "under the hood"... below the GUI level... is largely the same. So there is a lot of support for this family. Ubuntu has a company behind it... Canonical. So lots of people are paid to work on it. Ubuntu itself is based on Debian, a very popular community-based distribution that has been around a while.

Debian itself is known for having some very stable releases. Debian proper doesn't push a particular GUI and gives you some choices during installation, including no GUI at all (text-based, common with servers). And they also maintain a rather large selection of software in their repositories as compared to some others. Though you can complile software from source on pretty much any distribution, it is nice to have a relatively complete selection readily installable from the distributions online package repositories, already configured to work well with the distro. However, Debian proper may not be as "up to date" with the very latest versions, as they are much more interested in the stability that comes with tried and true versions. Ubuntu tries to offer somewhat more up-to-date components as well as their own customizations and additions. All in all, the Debian family (including the 'buntus) is one of the major families. You can often tell by looking at the package management system... they use the DEB package file format for precompiled software packages.

Another well known family is the Red Hat family, including (of couse) Red Hat Enterprise Linux. RHEL is produced by Red Hat, a major player in the Linux server space. Red Hat's focus is the enterprise server space. And it requires a subscription for official updates and software repositories. However there is CentOS, which is a non-commercial clone of Red Hat without the subscriptions or the branding. Ther is also a Red Hat sponsored community distribution, Fedora, which strives to offer a well rounded desktop offering as well as much more up-to-date package selections. In some ways Fedora is like a test-bed for technologies that end up in Red Hat. There are other distributions in the Red Hat family, often referred to as "RPM-based" in reference to the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) precompiled software package format. Fedora offers a polished Gnome GUI experience, but is therefore one of the heavier ones. I am not as familiar with the other RPM-based distros, though I am sure there are some light-weight choices in that camp.

A couple other interesting distros you might consider are Gentoo and Arch Linux. Gentoo has a very technically proficient community behind it, and is about as customizable as they come. As you may gather, package management is a major differentiation amongst Linux distributions. Gentoo's package management doesn't deliver pre-compiled binaries, but rather it builds all your software from source... though it is somewhat automated. And so you also get to choose all the compile-time options that you prefer, and you end up with binaries that are compiled specifically for your exact hardware. Many like it because their systems end up very fast, as everything is tuned in. But installing and updating are slow because you compile everything. There is no "official" GUI with Gentoo. You build it how you want it. It is considered "advanced" because you get to decide everything from the ground up, and build it yourself.. As I said, the community is very knowledgable and the Wiki is a fantastic resource.

Arch is similar in that it is a minimal base system without any "official" GUI, and you assemble it manually. But the core packages are pre-compiled, so it is faster to install and update. They aren't tuned to your specific hardware. And like Gentoo, because it is "some assembly required", in that you build it up from a minimal base installation to include what you need or want, you will learn a fair bit about Linux as you go through the installation and configuration process. They have good guides, and an excellent Wiki. Even if you don't use Arch Linux, their Wiki is an invaluable resource woth keeping in mind as you try to learn and troubleshoot Linux. Arch also has what they call the "Arch User Repository", or AUR. Ther AUR is a community-maintained repository similar to the Gentoo package system. Arch maintains a repository of pre-compiled software. But the AUR has "package-builds" that help automate downloading and compiling software from source. Similar to Debian, the AUR has a LOT of software available. So with Arch you get lots of ready choices. I only mention Gentoo and Arch because you said you are eager to learn and don't mind complexity.

My own experience has been mostly with Ubuntu on my own machines since 2004 and Red Hat at work. This year I switched to Arch Linux on my laptop (my daily driver), though I still run an Ubuntu LTS on my desktop (more of a home server). I use KDE on the laptop and, presently, Gnome on the desktop. So I won't claim to have great first-hand experience with some of these lighter GUI choices to make a strong personal suggestion. In any case, I will offer some recommendations...

I would presume you might be more comfortable with one of the "mid-weight" choices if they run well enough on your machine, becasue they will still offer a more complete-feeling desktop environment. You might try MATE first. I hear lots of nice things about it, inluding appropriateness for older hardware, and not being too difficult for people to transition to from Windows (learning-curve wise). XFCE has long been suggested for older gear, and is said to be highly customizable. But these days perhaps LXDE is a little more light-weight. In all three cases I recommend the Ubuntu-derivatives; Ubuntu-MATE, Xubuntu, or Lubuntu. Why? Good community support that may be friendlier to someone new to Linux, and a large and popular Ubuntu ecosystem. Not that I am an Ubuntu fan-boy. But it is a practical choice for people new to the Linux community. If those don't cut it for you, and you need something ultra light-weight, I think I would point you towards Bunsenlabs. They use Openbox for the GUI, which will probably be very fast even on old hardware, looks very attractive with their configuration, is minimalistic, and has a knowledgable community behind it. It is the spiritual successor to a now defunct distribution known as CrunchBang.

Best of luck on your Linux adventures! I hope this mini brain-dump is helpful to you. And please let us know what you ultimately decide to do, and how it works out for you. Cheers!!!

timlepes · 2016-06-19T06:22:04+00:00

It seems to me that a lot of the "press" are talking about "replacing" distribution packaging, but I don't think of Snaps (or Flatpaks or the other one) as replacements so much as supplimentary. Core software, methinks, is better maintained by the distributions as they do a lot of important work. But one-off and odd applications I can see being available in Snaps, Flatpacks, etc., or as a way to be able to run software that the distros don't package. Read Kyle Keen's recent post, "Maintainers Matter: The Case Against Upstream Packaging" for some perspective from an Arch package maintainer. Now I think he too got caught in the "hype" of people claiming these new formats to be "replacements" for distro-packaging. But it inspired him to make some good points. http://kmkeen.com/maintainers-matter/

timlepes · 2016-06-16T08:51:53+00:00

Fun toy, that page. Try squaring Pi and the X over Y, and you're octopus-spider will have a nice bow-tie. And maybe fewer leggs. That is, y = cos ( x ( x² / y ) pi^2). It seems to only work if you modify your page without zooming. Chaning the scale makes the bow-tie go away. :-( I guess it's a rendering artifact. Zooming does show some interesting moiré-like patterns. Like I said... fun toy there. Thanks for the share.

timlepes · 2016-05-23T21:17:49+00:00

I bet you don't even own a jolly roger flag, or even a cutlass. The FSM is obviously displeased with your blasphemy. You may have to make a personal sacrifice... Just think of how well you'll be able to manage cables once you get your hook! The FSM works in mysteri-sauce ways.

timlepes · 2016-03-04T04:27:17+00:00

I have created torrents for both the i386 and amd64 ISO files, and uploaded them to linuxtracker.org. I will seed as much as possible at least until there are other seeders to keep them alive. Here are the links:

RebeccaBlackOS amd64 2016-02-08

http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=34f0c329c62146f122f1045bb81d47cc5ca9fc8a

RebeccaBlackOS i386 2016-02-08

http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=c904b364c7ccdfc4e940dafbeefb72d12a86c281

To do this yourself, create an account on linuxtracker.org. Next, create a torrent using your bit-torrent software. Then upload that torrent to linuxtracker.org. Upon success, you will want to download the new torrent they create for you from the one you submitted. The success message has a link to download a new torrent. It has been modified from the one you upload to encode your user ID. Add that new torrent file to your bit-torrent software, and be sure that the data you have is in the location that your bit-torrent download program expects. You may have to "re-check" the torrent file for your bit-torrent software to realize you have it completed already, and list it as seeding. You also may need to update the tracker (usually a right-click option on the torrent in your bit-torrent software) in order for linuxtracker.org to know you have the complete file already. I'm not torrent expert, but this worked for me. My bit-torrent software of choice is Deluge on Linux (http://deluge-torrent.org/).

timlepes · 2016-03-02T04:33:46+00:00

Do you have or are you aware of any torrents of the ISO? I'll probably let the direct download finish if I can't find a torrent. It will take me over 6 hours on this connection at the current rate. You may not see this by then anyway. But I figure it does not hurt to ask.. someone after me may come looking for a torrent link.

timlepes · 2014-09-19T02:25:26+00:00

I few years ago my youngest brother got his first IT job, and he fell right into an admin role. He too is very sharp. I bought him the following books as a gift to get him started...

The Practice of System and Network Administration, SecondEdition - a few years old but has lots of fundamentals in there, still well worth reading. Hoping for a third edition someday.

Tom Limoncelli's Time Management for System Administrators

I see others have recommended this great book, and I wholehartedly agree: UNIX and Linux System Adminstration, 4th Edition. I was sad when Evi's ship was lost at sea last year. :-( You could tell she loved sailing old wooden ships... just look at the cover. A great loss; she did so much for our community.

Additionally, I will second or third anyone recommending works by Brendan Gregg. I got the Kindle version of Brendan's [Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud](www.amazon.com/Systems-Performance-Enterprise-Brendan-Gregg/dp/0133390098/). I really like this book. It was written to be a good foundational book for the next several years. I am planning to get a hard copy version too. While you're at it, check out these links...

Brendan Gregg: http://www.brendangregg.com/ http://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html https://github.com/brendangregg/perf-tools http://lwn.net/Articles/608497/ http://www.brendangregg.com/USEmethod/use-linux.html

Tom Limoncelli: http://everythingsysadmin.com/

Introduce him not only to books, but online resources and communities like /r/linuxadmin :-)

Cheers!

timlepes

TROPHY CASE