This is extremely encouraging to me. I am not affiliated with the project but here is what I’ve gathered. Run by Mike.
- Nix (with the functional declarative design)
- Cinnamon (DE mostly used by Linux Mint, Mike and I think Cinnamon doesn’t get enough respect)
- Two versions, main and “lite”.
- zero config auto update is a huge selling point imo
- flatpak is a nice touch
Main:
- “4 core and 4GB of ram” target
- Flatpak integrated and auto-updates
- Zoom flatpak
- Chrome flatpak and Firefox
- Libreoffice flatpak
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
git
firefox
libnotify
gawk
gnugrep
sudo
dconf
gnome-software
gnome-calculator
gnome-calendar
gnome-screenshot
flatpak
xdg-desktop-portal
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
system-config-printer
Lite:
- “2 core and 2 GB of RAM” target
- no flatpak
- firefox
zramSwap.memoryPercent = 100;
MemoryHigh = "500M";
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
git
firefox
libnotify
gawk
sudo
gnome-calculator
gnome-calendar
gnome-screenshot
system-config-printer
];
Installing
boot the special ISO and connect to wifi via the system settings via the start menu (rough edges here). install.
secure boot is not first-class supported in nix but it ‘can’ be done.
Does the market need this?
It feels like yes. See what do you install on other people’s computers?. A zero-support OS that isn’t tied into ChromeOS is a tall order. There are a lot of distros that are “semi” friendly but which are strong enough to give to a stranger and never hear from them again?
The pitch is compelling enough that I put it on my small laptop. I used it for about 20 minutes. That laptop is not a project laptop, and if I could just browse and do basic linux stuff and never think about maintaining it again I’d be happy. I can report back (and contribute to nixbook) if it serves my needs. If it passes my tests I may transition the family Win10 PC to nixbook. I’m getting spooked at how many more threats target Windows than Linux.
tweaking
I’m an ultra noob with nix but you should be able to edit this and have it work. Mike has a post about which config file to edit but I can’t find it. https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nixos-rebuild
$ # Edit your configuration
$ sudo nano /etc/nixos/configuration.nix
$ # Rebuild your system
$ sudo nixos-rebuild switch
I added silversearcher tldr tilde and seemed to work.
Why not an immutable OS for servers? It seems like an even better choice for servers than for a desktop to me. It’s basically just like docker/containers but for your whole OS, configuration-wise.
I love my declarative NixOS servers/systems, and would never go back to imperative setups, it just seems archaic. The only exception I have (for now) is my pfSense router, as I don’t trust myself enough to setup a secure router.
I find that I have to adjust files that would be immutable quite often for servers. The immutability tends to get in the way of configuring some parts of the system, and having to reboot to apply updates results in downtime.
You don’t have to reboot to adjust configuration or update. At least not with NixOS, don’t know much about other immutables.
With rpm-ostree systems (Fedora and derivatives), you do. Well, technically you can apply them live, but it is highly inadvisable to do so, and sometimes you actually can’t at all
I never really worked much with rpm-ostree, besides a short stint with Bazzite. But never really customized it, so I don’t really know how that experience is. But I would encourage you to look into NixOS (or something else not image based) whenever you feel to experiment with another immutable. It’s very nice for servers.