The gatekeeping I was referring to is giving people shit for being weebs, furries, etc. etc. Feels skeezy and moralistic. One of my favourite things about the Linux community is how openly eccentric so many people are. Even if it isn’t my aesthetic it’s way less contrived than the bland wastelands that corporate culture generates.
It wasn’t really relevant to your question, but you do you, weeb OP.
Idk, I feel like gatekeeping is a bigger problem than anime thumbnails.
I feel like every larger open source project that doesn’t have a Tyson Tan designed mascot doesn’t have one because they refused to let him make one for them.
I agree that this is a sad thing, but I guess not everyone in the Linux world is into furry waifus.
Sway is just well made, solid and reliable. It does what you need it to do, and it does it properly.
My approach has been to slowly learn how to play to the strengths of Linux and not pine after anything on Windows because ultimately I’ve gained a lot more than I’ve lost.
The one piece of software I haven’t been able to avoid keeping around is Sigma Studio, so I have a 10 year old shit top for running it, but it also runs in a VM if I need it. Thankfully I only need to use it once or twice a year.
If you rely on multiple pieces of software for important everyday activities and they aren’t usable in wine or a VM, you probably have no choice but to use the operating system that is the best vehicle for those tools. Doesn’t stop you from also using linux for other stuff, but I can understand how that’s not the same as going all in.
Not really partition related but in terms of backups, state replication and reliability:
State of Systems: NixOS configs. Art: Borg + Borgbase. Code: Git + Sourcehut.
You mean like https://tauri.app/ ?
I feel like microsoft’s gameplan is less “everyone must use windows” these days and more “we want to gatekeep tech on as many levels as possible”. I’m wary of relying on anything they put out. I think we’ve all recently seen what big tech companies do when they decide its time to monetize more aggressively.
Right now helix is pretty good for what I do with it.
I can declare the complete state of my systems in a config file that I store on sourcehut with git and pull down to have a fully configured system on new hardware whenever I want it.
I can use tiling window managers.
I can work with native containers easily.
I can run an operating system that is designed to be the most useful tool it can be, not the most profitable product it can be.
This is one of my favourite things about tracker music. It’s obviously a lot more complicated to share the full source files for music that uses a workflow involving paid tools or that is complex to replicate. The de facto openness of the tracker format is something that is unlikely to be seen again, but rendering stems / sharing patches / encouraging sampling are all still valuable.
I’d love to see a healthy foss music scene that encorages building on one another’s work and would definitely participate. Music is way more interesting when we don’t have to fight economic territorialism to make it, as complicated a path as that has become.
I used zsh for ages but switched to fish a few months ago because its navigation features are amazingly smooth and seamless. I generally write scripts in sh or python so navigation is the most important part of the terminal for me. Fish has bash compatibility plugins if you need them, but the main reason I use it is that it’s the nicest feeling shell to use for getting around in a terminal that I’ve found so far.
That counts for a lot.
I also haven’t noticed a significant performance hit from using nixos on desktop coming from arch a few months ago. Nix definitely does a lot of stuff and that can chew through bandwidth at times, but overall I think the time saved from not compiling heaps of aur packages has outweighed the time lost to nix updating and maintaining the overall state of my system on every update.
I tend to run relatively lightweight systems these days and haven’t really noticed sluggishness compared to an equivalent system on arch. My desktop environment has been sway on both for a while and this may account for my experience of a leaner and more reliable system on both, but it’s hard to say.
I’d definitely want to investigate bandwidth optimization strats for nix if I was heavily constrained in that area, or possibly move to something where cpu and bandwidth constraints were given priority over reproducibility. For my current setup nixos has been a game changer on both desktop and server, but I only really have arch as a direct comparison.
( For context, my current desktop nixos systems are a 9 year old low-end cintiq, a 2017 dell optiplex 7050 minipc, and a steam deck. They all have ssds and at least 12gb of ram. All feel super snappy for everyday work with a web browser and a heap of open terminals and workspaces. )
Helix + sway + nix-shell + git + sourcehut is a pretty tasty combo not gonna lie.
I like it quite a lot on my projector / media pc, but I wouldn’t daily it over sway with custom hotkeys. Cosmic is definitely turning my head tho…
Here’s the straightforward version of why I use it:
The entire state of your operating system is defined in a config file, and changes are made by changing the config file. This makes it super easy to reproduce your exact system many times and to know where all the many different configuration elements that describe your system are located.
Updates are applied atomically, so you don’t have to worry about interrupting the update process and if it fails, the previous state of your system is still bootable. By default every time you change something, you get another option in the boot menu to roll back to.
Making container-like sub systems is super easy when you’re familiar with nix, so you can have as many different enclaves as you like for different software versions, development environments, desktop setups, whatever without taking a performance hit. Old versions of stuff are very accessible without breaking your new stuff.
The package manager has a lot of software and accessing nonfree stuff is straightforward. Guix looks rad, but nix ended up being the more practical compromise for my usecase. I didn’t want to have to package a heap of software the moment I made the switch.
That is certainly one use of the word gatekeeping. Another common use of the word is:
“when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who does or does not have access or rights to a community or identity”.