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.
Yeah, immutable may be more friendly to non-tech savvy users, but it doesn’t mean it’s lacking any functionality. The processes are just different.
I’ve been on Bazzite for a while now and it’s almost boring how stable it is.
I agree it’s a potential drawback for people that like tinkering. It kind of turns your computer into a very flexible gaming console.
You can tinker for the most part, it’s just done differently. In the Universal Blue world, that would be creating your own OCI container using their image template or blue build.
The nice thing is that it makes the OS much more reproducible than imperative commands and scripts.
Yeah, I have the same experience. Barring sudden changes to included softwares (like changing Discover out for Bazaar), my Bazzite installation just works without any intervention, and major version updates are applied in regular updates.
I barely even noticed when they replaced Discover with Bazaar. But that’s probably because I generally use CLI to update and what not. I love that “ujust update” updates everything including distroboxes and firmware.
I use the terminal for updates too, I just use the store when I want to install new software, and that’s how I noticed. There was also a dead icon on my taskbar.