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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 10th, 2023

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  • Maybe not some obscure ones, but here are some lesser known ones:

    Talos Linux. It’s an immutable operating system designed specifically to deploy kubernetes.

    OpenSuse Harvester Think Proxmox, but instead of VM’s and LXC containers, it’s VM’s and Kubernetes.

    XCP-NG is a RHEL based distro designed for managing Linux virtual machines using the xen hypervisor, as opposed to KVM. Think Proxmox, but RHEL and Xen (also no LXC). However, it does not come with a web ui out of the box, you have to deploy it yourself. Technically, XCP is a Xen distribution, since Xen is a kernel with nothing but a hypervisor that runs under the main distro, but the primary management virtual machine is RHEL based, and uses Linux.

    Speaking of Proxmox, Proxmox is technically a Linux distro.

    SnowflakeOS is a project that aims to bring a GUI focused experience to NixOS.

    TurnkeyLinux (site is loading very, very slowly for me right now) is not a single distribution, but rather a set of debian based distributions that are designed to be turnkey appliance virtual machines that contain and host a specific app. To deploy the app, all you have to do is set up the virtual machine.

    Now, here are some not-linux, but interesting distros:

    SmartOS. They ported KVM to unix, and also can use Linux syscall translation (similar to wine) to run apps in containers as well. There is also Bhyve. It’s a very interesting hypervisor platform.

    OmniOS is similar. Bhyve, KVM, and Linux syscall translation in containers.



  • Advice online seemed like i needed to basically create a nix flake for the app. I still havent gotten it installed because i have no idea what nix flakes are.

    So, the problem is that flakes are technically an “experimental” feature, and thus are not allowed to be included as a primary solution in the official documentation. But, basically everybody uses flakes, so it leads to this crazy documentation split, and is a big part of why documentation on Nix is so bad.

    Some stuff can only be done with flakes, some stuff only with non-flakes and you have to figure out which is which on your own, while also dealing with the poor documentation for either.

    The advice you received was wrong. You could also use a combination of a default.nix file and a shell.nix file to create a package and development environment for your app. But, the documentation is so poor that it’s unlikely you will learn this, and figuring out how to do this on your own, is again, a massive time sink.



  • Stallman doesn’t seem to get that pedophilia is wrong because of the hierarchy of power, and the power imbalances between older/younger people, not because of some inherent wrongness about being attracted to a prepubescent person. This is shown by how he condemns some pedophilia, but is accepting of 12+/past puberty. (I despise this logic, because it would also make gay sex and sodomy wrong, as well).

    I find this deeply ironic, because his primary issue with proprietary software is the way that it gives developers levels of power over users. From his article Why Open Source Misses the Point

    But software can be said to serve its users only if it respects their freedom. What if the software is designed to put chains on its users? Then powerfulness means the chains are more constricting, and reliability that they are harder to remove.

    You would expect someone who is so in tune with the hierarchies that appear with software developers, publishers, and users, to also see those same hierarchies echoed in relationships between people of vastly different ages, but instead, we get this. I’m extremely disappointed.

    These failures to understand hierarchy and power, are exactly why Stallman shouldn’t be in a position of power. Leaders should continually prove that they understand hierarchy and the effects of their actions on those below them. Someone who doesn’t understand how their power could affect another, shouldn’t be a leader.
















  • (There is a learning curve to packaging stuff yourself.)

    “Learning curve” is an understatement. Nix is one of the most poorly documented projects I’ve seen, next to openstack. Coming into it with no background in functional programming didn’t help.

    Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to package openstack on nix.

    But I’ve tried to package other stuff, like quarto, and that was a nightmare. Nixpkgs didn’t have an updated pandoc and I spent an eternity asking around for help, to try to package it. An updated version just got pushed to unstable a few days ago. The same matrix channels I joined to ask for help have been discussing this since then. Props on them for getting it working, but anyone who says that you can easily package anything, is capping. You need to have an understanding of the nix language, nix packaging (both of which are poorly documented), and a rudimentary packaging ecosystem of what you are trying to package.

    Don’t even get me started on flakes vs nonflakes.

    I still use nix-shell for all my development environments, because it’s the best way for reproducible environments I can share I’ve found.