Yeah, it does make sense that you can compare them in that sense, but as far as actual system setup goes, I don’t think they’re comparable. Don’t get me wrong, I love NixOS. When I was learning nixlang and setting up everything to be modular and reproducible, I was having a blast.

However, I also had a blast learning Arch and figuring out how my system works the way it does. I’ll be honest, though, NixOS helped me learn how Home was separate from Root. That alone really helped me learn how the general Linux system file hierarchy worked.

But there are also things I would have never learned about Linux if I never messed with Arch, such as essential system symlinks, how they work, and how to use chroot in the live environment to fix broken ones (thanks to a botched Arch update, lol).

If you like it, learn it-use it. All this comparing and inter-distro warring seems pointless. There’s not a distro I’ve used that I haven’t had things I really liked and really hated.

I had some weird artifacting issues in an older version of Nvidia proprietary. While viewing certain windows or colors, my screen would flicker, or else I would get weird diagonal lines across my whole screen.

I went nuts trying to figure it out. In the end since I started on Pop!_OS, I just easily rolled back to a previous version of the proprietary drivers and called it good. Well, later I wanted to try EndeavourOS. I was too noob to figure how to roll back the drivers there.

So a friend asked me, “Are you using display port or HDMI? Try the other one.” I highly doubted that would fix anything, but for the sake of trying everything, I switched to HDMI. And well… fuck me if it didn’t work. I’ve just been running HDMI ever since.

I’m more in the group of Nix != Arch. They’re just different. I love them both, tbh.

I would like to add that I have never recommended them to beginners. I usually like to recommend Pop!_OS.

I really have been wanting to try Bazzite lately, too.

You should try it.iusearchbtw

I’m not sure how fast the pacman repo updates, but I’m using that plus Syncthing-Fork from F-Droid. I don’t think they’ve dropped 2.0 in there, yet.

Looks like the Arch Syncthing package upstream URL is the official Syncthing and is running 2.0.1. I can now confirm that 1.x from Syncthing-Fork works fine with Syncthing 2.0. I just set it up this morning, oddly enough.

I’ve never really used Ubuntu, but I’m going to agree with others here. If its what you use, it would be better in the sense that it would be much easier for you to give her phone assistance when she needs it, rather than giving her something you’re not used to and possibly having to go over and troubleshoot for her.

If she wants something more in the line with Windows, you could try Kubuntu, but I think the rigging behind KDE is pretty complicated for a casual user. You may want to help her set up the way she wants her desktop to look at first if you go this route. The only other Windows-like desktop is Cinnamon, but Cinnamon-Wayland is still in alpha and once they officially drop it that could make more work for you later.

Admittedly, I have 0 experience with the Unity DE, so that’d be your call if you think you can familiarize it for her.

Manjaro has been pretty quiet for a long time. There’s gotta be a point where we forgive and forget. I like Manjaro and used it as my entry point to Arch. It sets a lot more up for you out of the box and has manjaro-specific package bundles that just work on install.

According to Manjarno, its been just under three years since their last mistake, and that was just forgetting to renew the SSL cert for their archived forums. Probably about time we let it back into the Arch family.

It happens to layouts. Some people add some small changes to make an alternate layout which makes more sense to them. For example, Colemak and Colemak-DH. DH only changes 3 keys, shifts 3, and swaps 2.

Using topgrade without realizing what I was doing. Seemed okay for a few days until my headphones suddenly jacked to 1000 and began some sort of alarm-like buzzing. Thankfully they were not on my head, because it was so loud my gf and I thought there was some sort of fire alarm going off. This was on EndeavourOS.

I tried topgrade again, not knowing that the app was what had done it. This time on vanilla Arch. I was not so fortunate this round and I took the sound full blast into my earholes. I reacted in milliseconds and Hulk-smash threw them halfway across the room. No lasting damage since I was so quick, but fuck me wearing headphones is more dangerous than I thought.

Luckily I’ve learned from past mistakes and made Timeshift restore points before every update. I reverted to before the topgrade changes and my distro has still been holding strong since then. I think I’ll make my own alias for full upgrade and call it updawg.

99% of the time a dual boot doesn’t work its because of Windows. There should be no real reason that Mint fails anything simple as long as its compatible with your system. I’ve seen others report that Windows will occasionally destroy a dual boot when updating.

Oooh. I can have my Breath of the Wild time of day wallpapers again? I had something setup on Windows where three wallpapers (BotW landcape day, night, and sunset/rise) would change five times a day depending on the time.

Hopefully the day comes soon when we can just leave Windows behind altogether. I wouldn’t be surprised if they ruin dualboot on purpose with every update.

Godless heathen here.

Yeah, I was just thinking this needs a lot more upfront info. I mean, kudos for the site that harkens back to the 90’s infomercial era and keeping it comfortable for those generations, but a page with some specs and actual info would go nicely with that.

I mean, I just plug the drive in once every week or so, move any new personal, irreplaceable files to the drive via whichever file manager I fancy at the time, and then set it aside for next backup.

There’s no replacement for physically backing up your data. Automation can even be the cause of file loss. Take it from someone who has spent days recovering their files via disk recovery tools.

External drives are camping kits for PCs. If you have one, then it doesn’t matter if you lose your system, just reinstall or install something new, open your camping kit and make camp. Make a dotfiles repository if you want to save your home and app configs.

Windows and Mac is like a long term home ownership with a car, kids, partner, and too many bills to be free again. Linux is a nomad life. Nothing is for certain and you could lose your tent in a thunderstorm if you don’t stake it down properly.

Also, Timeshift is a very rudimentary and first-layer protection. Something that got configured wrong could have been configured wrong months ago and you may not have caught it at the time and all the restore points you’ve kept could have the same problem.

Yeah, it really speaks volumes about the devs. It means that no matter how innocent the package may be or how long its been there, they still pick through it all multiple times to make sure their users are safe and happy.

But RIP Deepin users. Tbh though, I’ve been hanging around Linux forums a while and still have yet to see someone who actually daily drives Deepin, lol.

There really wasn’t a lot of ramp up to it but there were Discord screenshots of his toxic personality being put down in r/feedthebeast at the time and (iirc) one of the devs that actually did do work on the project quoted the whole “poly” thing. Dunno if there was a screen of it, though.

But even before that, there was apparently some horrible stuff that MultiMC did that resulted in PolyMC and other forks in the first place. That whole application has a shady past, tbh.

I’m just trying to say, use Hyprland if you like Hyprland. There WILL be a fork of it someday. That is always guaranteed to happen when a dev becomes a piece of shit. Its all about when it is going to happen, but by all means move over to the fork when it does.

As long as its open source and money does not change hands, you are in no way directly supporting a fascist dev. Once that software is on your PC that software is yours to do what you want with it, not the dev’s. By all means, design your Hyprland as pro-trans with trans flag colors. I endorse that wholeheartedly, in fact. 🏳️‍⚧️

I just don’t like when people get auto-labeled for something they use or do. Its basic stereotyping and it drives me nuts. A lot of people just don’t want to give the benefit of the doubt to others before even getting to know them. Getting branded because of a piece of software you enjoy is just… its up there, at any rate. I really can’t put words to how frustrated it makes me. I don’t even use Hyprland (I did try it, though). I run KDE because I’m a dirty mouse user. I’m much too smoothbrain for a tiling WM.

Absolutely this. Too many people think that because you use some open source software from some fascist dev that “obviously you’re fascist, too”.

Bigotry: obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.

Hating on Hyprland users that know what’s going on but still really like the software fits this definition. Plus, isn’t the biggest kick in the face having the exact people you hate use and enjoy your software?

This is exactly why I switched from PolyMC to Prism Launcher. The PolyMC dev was a fascist prick and an anti-gay/trans activist. His fear was that PolyMC was “going to get taken over by the gays due to the name having Poly in it (as in polysexual)”, so he started banning all the devs who disagreed with him or even made a joke about it.

Those devs forked the project and, to rub salt in the wound, made the icon rainbow. But guess what? Its the same software. They forked it because they still liked it and wanted to use it. The software itself had absolutely nothing to do with the dev.

That is quite a while, lol. To be fair though, there are an insane amount of lines in most packages. Quietly adding a brief line in a seemingly innocent features package is like hiding a needle in a haystack.

Its easy to overlook things when you have a pile of packages to review during every routine. Its especially true if they missed it the first time, since its easier to review changes in a package rather than go through the whole thing again.

It was an installation to two different PCs. I don’t think it has to do with NixOS rather than the installer software.

When I looked around on the web for solutions I found these tricks on a bug report, so at the time it had already been reported.