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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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And now DHH is getting involved in this shitshow. For those not chronically online enough, DHH is one of the developers of Rails, has a rap sheet of drama, and has his own dirty laundry full of racism, transphobia, and has managed to drive his own company into the shitter.
So really a bunch of winners are coming out of the woodwork for this one.
As a happy Debian user i'm not hearing any of it.
I wonder if this conversation can even be had on this instance. Half the conversation is missing from the comments.
Good on the team for not aiding the genocidal American MIC.
Good thing Linux distros can be forked, so devs who might have a target on their backs can theoretically fork NixOS and run away with that.
Good thing Linux distros can be forked,
Distro isn't the problem; The OS is already on a far too tight update schedule, fork away, but we need the package repository to remain sound and I don't know what this would do to that.
I'm not familiar with NixOS
However, short reminder that the internet was largely funded by the US military. It's not uncommon that the US military brings significant developments for the internet. This is nothing new. The latest outcry is solely because the US is sliding into fascism, not because of the involvement with the US military.
I don't think it's solely for that reason. There are privacy concerns and concerns the os could be used for the MIC.
Can we avoid calling taking action against valid moral objections "drama"? It only serves to make the people doing the right thing sound like they're being immature, even when they're obviously right.
Objecting to a fascist government's influence over very powerful build infrastructure used around the world is the right thing to do.
I've been saying this for years: Just switch to Guix.
Yah 100% free no thanks. And I actually like systemd.
I've considered it, but i like nix better than scheme, and i need non-free software and kernel, which is doable with non-guix but much more tedious with third party iso's. I went back to Void linux but i still use nix + home manager, and the huge repo alone wins out for me.
Also, a fraction of packages, users and guides.
I think Guix is great, but as a NixOS enthusiast who genuinely wanted to try it out, I gave up in the face of the lack of docs for people who aren't working in lab or have a PhD in computing of some sort.
Also, how is shepherd better than systems? Genuinely curious.
Lastly, I agree Nix is not a very enjoyable language, but scheme doesn't look like a very beginner friendly option either. Could be wrong, I'm not a programmer.
As someone who is curious about Nix but has given up after trying to wade through the myriad and conflicting "getting started" resources for it, I cant imagine how bad guix docs must be for a Nix enthusiast to adandon it.
If you are still trying to find the best guide, I recommend this one
That's one the books I tried to get through. Maybe it was in a more raw state at the time, but it didn't click for me.
Guix basically only has the official docs (which has a lot missing in my experience), a single Youtube channel (System Crafters), official issues/mailing list/IRC, System Crafters forum, the source code, toys.whereis.social, and rarely a blog post or random git repo that might have the information you need
How do you do Flakes with Guix? That's probably the most important feature Nix has.
Big, ... helpful community
Not sure I would agree with that lol
whenever I asked about something in irc I got fairly swift and very helpful responses 🤷
I was trying to package Typst for them once. The IRC barely gave me any help, nor did the mailing list, so I had to guess a lot of things on my own. I ended up spending several hours working on it and fine tuning it to what the documentation wanted as much as I could. Then I finally made the submission, which was ignored for an entire year, before finally being rejected. It's clear that the package repository has a severe lack of packages, but if there's no clear way to contribute, then idk how anyone can take the project seriously.
I've also encountered bugs that made the tools unusable on my laptop that similarly got no response on IRC and the mailing lists.
Meanwhile on Nix, if I submit an issue on Nixpkgs, it will usually get resolved by the maintainer in 24 hours, or at most a week if it's a larger change, and I don't even have to do anything, and things aren't constantly broken on aarch64.
Is it non-trivial to enable non-free repos?
no it isn't, non-guix is right there and only one line in the right file
I enjoy lisp and emacs but nothing will convince me to use guix over nixos. At most I guess I would switch to arch and use the guix package manager there.
The most ridiculous thing in the conversations I read was someone arguing that the fact that Anduril has a member at SC (Steering Committee) weakens their position. The mental gymnastic is so insane to me because it completely naively expect people who have a conflict of interest to do the right thing. What if they don't ?
There is real smart fascists out there. they won't kindly "recuse themselves" and weaken Anduril positions. Very suspicious that someone would argue that Anduril gets weaker at SC by having people there.
Steering Committee works for Military Company
It's only one SC member, and they switched jobs after being elected last year. I think the Nix community is generally very much against US MIC, and unlikely to actually elect someone working for them. Although it was well-known that tomberek (and johnringer) are US-military-aligned.
After reading a bit more into the modteam situation, I have to say I'm on the mod team's side here.
First things first: a simple search for "anduril nixos" shows that NixOS and Anduril Industries (defense technology) have been entangled for years.
So, pretty sure there's plenty history & dissent here, but I never dived into it.
In detail this looks like just another community drama, but when you zoom out a different picture emerges: commercial interest, a will to silence dissent (and I will give them the benefit of the doubt that it isn't for ideological reasons but simple worry about money). The Enshittification of a distro. With a military/fascist twist.
Here's an interesting detail:
Unfortunately, the Constitution does not provide a meaningful recourse to SC overreach
So they have a flawed "constitution" which - judging by its name - should supersede the steering committee. It's not like it's really a constitution though, with all that would entail. It sounds more like, hm, "communitywashing" to me. Still, I wonder if they're willing to take that colorful terminology one step further and make an amendment to said constitution.
So yeah, political bias and unilateral decisions.
I've always been leery of NixOS, and I mean since they started pushing it over a decade ago, always claiming it's revolutionary better than $STANDARD_LINUX_DISTRO.
First things first: a simple search for “anduril nixos” shows that NixOS and Anduril Industries (defense technology) have been entangled for years.
It's more like Anduril using Nix{OS} and trying to insert themselves into the community. There's been a lot of opposition to that, including an open letter and maintainers quitting; this was a big part of the reason for Steering Committee formation in the first place. The SC has since voted on some based things, like banning Anduril from job posting on community forums and sponsoring conferences. I was hoping they would just ban any mention of Anduril anywhere, but that's going too far for them unforutenately; and banning technical contributions wouldn't make sense.
An SC member joining Anduril (after being elected, not before, mind you) is really bad, but I bet they will lose their seat in a month's time when there's a new election. The community is mostly antifascist and thus anti-MIC. It's like one of the most leftist technical communities I've seen, perhaps more so than Rust.
From the last incident, there was Aux that wanted to create an alternative for the Nix ecosystem, but it died before it even started. Right now what we do have is Lix (what I'm currently using) and Tvix as an alternative for the Nix program, and Guix as an alternative ecosystem that's nowhere near as complete.