I’m considering NixOS for the Framework. Steep learning curve but the easy rollback means that you can never break it permanently.
Nah, don’t believe that hype. When it comes to drivers or kernel NixOS isn’t special.
I hated having to run garbage collection and that files didn’t have a timestamp, that the PATH was miles long, that you couldn’t possibly know the location of any system file because there’s a hash involved and so on and so on.
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I just installed Debian Bullseye. I had to do an offline install using the full image, then upgrade to the backported 5.14 kernel to get the wifi working (required disabling secureboot). Netinstall should be okay if you use an ethernet adapter then upgrade the kernel after as well. It also needs the nonfree intel package of course. Even with the ‘unoficial’ nonfree firmware netinstall image, the wifi wasnt working for me without backporting the kernel.
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This statement is very odd to me. I don’t think that people generally use NixOS because the drivers or kernel are special but because of the other features like easy to share, declarative build/development environments.
I don’t mean to imply that you don’t have good reason to dislike the distro, just seems unusual to point out drivers and kernel when those aren’t really that distro’s distinguishing features.
Your other points are more compelling IMO although I don’t think NixOS intends for you to have to interact with the full path very often especially since it changes from derivation to derivation. By that I don’t mean you didn’t have to deal with the long path names to accomplish your tasks just that it isn’t the way the OS intends for you to have to do that.
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Out of curiosity, what issues are you referring to? My 21.10 upgrade (from 21.04) was pretty smooth aside from a few GNOME extensions that were out of date and a minor animation change when switching desktops that was easily disabled.
In 21.10, looks like people are reporting issues with audio, trackpad, and intermittent freezing. I think I’ve seen issues with wifi too, but I can’t find the right thread/post at the moment. I’m sure everything is fixable, but it’s certainly not “setting things up once, and having it run without fuss for two or more years.”
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What I meant is that if you have problems with those you won’t be able to fix the problem by rolling back.
There’s also the fact that some things do depend on the running kernel, for example CUDA. So the promise of perfect reproducibility is broken on things like that.
I used Nix for a while and to me, well, it sucked.
The derivation system isn’t great either by the way 
I’m using Fedora 34 (upgrading to 35 when it releases) and I’m happy to say that everything is working. I initially had to connect a USB Ethernet adapter after the installation and run a sudo dnf update -y to get the latest packages so the wifi would work, but ever since then it’s been awesome.
I had to do this about a month ago and it worked great after updating. However, I scrubbed that install and after a time (2 days ago) came back and tried the same thing. This time after updating the wifi still was not working.
Apparently Fedora 35 works fully out of the box. I should note that I never used a respin. I rather liked Gnome 40. Of course I’m finding tiling managers might be more my thing.
I can see clearly that you’re not a fan of Nix and I really don’t have a problem with that. I don’t share your opinions but you’re welcome to them.
This just isn’t accurate though and I think setting the record straight for people interested in NixOS is worthwhile. Kernel and driver installs are indeed a part of the NixOS generation and can be rolled back if you have an issue. If you have a functioning NixOS install and then an update to the kernel breaks it you can roll back to the previous generation. Not sure why you thought that wasn’t the case I just had to verify on my old laptop running NixOS to confirm that this was true and sure enough rolling back an update rolls back any kernel or driver updates installed.
I’m not trying to convince you that you were wrong and you should give NixOS another try. I don’t advocate for anyone using software they don’t enjoy there’s too many good options out there to make a recommendation like that.
But I don’t think all of your criticisms are factual and anyone interested in trying NixOS should know that.
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That’s accurate
While I never embraced NixOS in my heart some team mates liked it (and were quite proficient in it) and I remember the problems with CUDA + running kernel.
But really I don’t intend to start a discussion on the merits of Nix (hey, I still maintain a couple of packages!), if you like it by all means enjoy it.
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Update: Switched to KDE Plasma, and it looks like I’m here to stay.
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I also recently switched from Gnome after about 10 years of using it. I am totally blown away by how much better KDE is now. Also seems to have much better HiDPI support out of the box which is a bonus with the framework needing fractional scaling - I’m running at 150% and it seems to work almost perfectly!
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If you use Plasma (Wayland) you can enter any custom scaling level, just like you can on Windows. I really like 130% on both Windows and Plasma.
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I have settled with PopOs. I am currently debating about switching to Fedora 35. I am still not 100% sure.
I am not using fractal scaling just 100% with HiDPI off
It depends on why you using pop. If it is for gaming or doing any kind of development having Ubuntu repos is REALLY nice. Fedora using a different package system is a learning curve if you’ve never used it, but if you are ok with learning you can get Fedora setup pretty much the same as Pop.
NixOS! Formerly used it on my Thinkpad X270, but figured I’d try out Fedora 35 beta once I got my framework… bad idea, it was so incredibly buggy for me. I also missed having the much larger # of packages in nixpkgs than in the Fedora + rpmfusion repos.
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Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with the WiFi workaroud. I’m a linux newbie still. Only have really used Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04. I tried Fedora 34, but I wasn’t really certain how to get WiFi going. I also tried Fedora 35, beta. This actually worked surprisingly well, until I updated to the latest patch and all system sound completely broke. This is likely just a stability issue with F35 beta. I hope to switch to F35 when the complete version comes out, though. I really want to learn more about the linux ecosystem.
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Have you seen this salt script that gets 20.04 working completely?
I’ve used this and 20.04 is purring for me.
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Well, thank you for bringing that to my attention. This worked beautifully!
EDIT: I also want to add that I tried Ubuntu 21.04 for a while, and was increasingly bothered by the mouse lag that others have reported as an issue with 21.04 on the framework laptop. 21.04, other than the mouse lag, did work better out-of-the-box, however.