Nix user. The declaritive config IS the documentation and I enjoy no longer having to document how to setup my system as much. I don’t enjoy scripting or automating things, but I enjoy the benefits of only needing to do it once via Nix’s config system.
I enjoy engineering: an engineer will spend 3 hours figuring out how to do a 2 hour job in 1 hour.
Read-only and not as polished as some of the older commercial versions, but https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.cosmos.unreddit/ also works. They have different access methods like web scraping. Works well enough for lurking when Reddit isn’t blocking my VPN, which they seem to block/unblock at random.
Its likely hard because its honestly niche.
Linux administration is terminal first so SSH is pretty much all you need. Some services have a WebUI to fill the gap, but its bound to that service. Most server variants of distros don’t even include a desktop environment.
KVM-over-IP (hardware device) is likely a more common approach because if you need video, might as well have BIOS access.
There may be something in the virtualization space where the hypervisor provides a remote desktop, but I’m not familiar with this space. A quick search for proxmox and remote desktop yielded mostly results for guest OS setups instead of at the host layer.
If you want punishment go for NixOS!
But once it clicks you have a fully declarative setup**. I edit a file, activate, commit to git. On another system, pull, activate.
** The config system is expansive but not exhaustive. I still have to login to Slack, pick my theme, etc. My VPN on the other hand is just ready credentials and all.
I never have to remember the 100 little tweaks I made, every tweak is in git. Noise canceling pipewire filter, what software I had installed, service configurations, secret management, disk partitions, all portable between different systems.
A lighter introduction is probably home manager, works in any Linux system or macOS. Manages your home directory as the name implies.
You can also go lighter with a repo flake.nix and a devShell. Its like a generic virtual environment. Auto activate with direnv. A step up from a devShell would be https://devenv.sh/ which tracks more like home manager with configurable modules. A devShell is really a bash script with these programs available from Nix.
I couldn’t go without LSPs these days.
Real time diagnostics. Jump to implementation. Code actions.
Its just so much faster and my code rarely doesn’t run on first try outside of logic errors, but it still runs.
https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim was nice back in the day, but neovim and the plugin ecosystem takes it to another level.
Edit: I agree with you on git when learning. I’m old, over 15 years of experience on it. I don’t have anything to gain typing the same handful of commands I use everyday.
Vim/Konsole are an Apples to Oranges comparison. Modern TUIs are closer in feature parity. Personally I use Zellij with NeoVim and LazyVim as the base config. If you use an LLM, customization becomes easier.
Personal preferences are personal preferences though if VSCode is working for you.
Neovim. Also there for the plugin ecosystem. Some popular feature rich presets, all customizable.
https://www.lazyvim.org/ https://astronvim.com/ https://nvchad.com/
Quick search suggests Emacs is the only other major rival to VSCode/Neovim so you’re stuck with a TUI or a VSCode fork for a rich plugin ecosystem (non-athoritive statement, 30s web search).
Don’t know if they can. If I’m recalling correctly he holds enough Class B shares to retain supermajority voting power.
Anyone else using the same concept would have to write an increasingly convoluted while loop with extra steps.
Sounds like an origin story for recursion.
NixOS. Started with Yellow Dog Linux in 1998.
I don’t do everything through nix’s derivation system.
Many of my configs are just an outOfStoreSymlink to my configs in the same dotfiles repos. I don’t need every change wrapped in a derivation. Neovim is probably the largest. A few node projects for automations I’m fine using pnpm to manage. Nix still places everything but I can tweek those configs and commit in the same repo without a full blown activation.
Like, from Yellow Dog Linux? Was my first Linux distro as a kid (grew up with an Apple computer). Red Hat based so checks out. TIL.
No. Its all text file config. You wouldn’t use live CD mode. You define your own how you want it to work.
Its a steep learning curve so if looking for off the shelf solutions, don’t use nix. If you need something custom but through a single config paradigm, nix is awesome.
Soap boxing here but I feel these kinds of use cases is what NixOS is built for.
Declarative config to setup the system, users, and apps.
Declarative and customizable impermanence exactly how you want it.
I use Tails as well but NixOS is my daily driver. Anything not marked explicitly to persist is dropped each reboot. I’m the only user so I keep the last 30 days of non persisted data for like a power outage but that’s something I had to go out of my to setup for my use case.
https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
Chromium and their particular fork have much better exploit hardening via sandboxing.
My understanding is Firefox has better anti-fingerprinting and uBlock origin via manifest v2 support (or v2 features ported to v3).
The argument often used is malicious ads. Sandboxing and hardening largely mitigates ads that contain exploits, but it doesn’t protect against social engineering, crypto mining, tracking, etc.
So I guess it comes down to your threat model and desired experience.
I personally prefer the uBlock origin experience, but an ad free experience and escape from targeted advertising was my target opsec when venturing into privacy.