Nah, both ways are fine. The first one just installs the package, the second one enables the module, which installs the package + does a bunch of additional setup and gives you super convenient configuration options (like setting up mail accounts declaratively from nix)
Idk. With Arch I felt like I constantly had to be on top of things. With nix, everything is rock solid and stable, and if I want to change or add something, I do that, once, and then it’s also rock solid until all eternity and across all my machines.
In total I might have spent more time interacting with nix already, but it feels less like “work” than with arch. Higher setup burden, almost zero maintenance burden and zero mental overhead.
Happy holidays btw
Edit: forgot to include the context. For the Thunderbird example, I have spent 1-2 hours once, 2 years ago, converting all the Thunderbird config options to nix, and adding my mail accounts through nix. I have not had to go into the Thunderbird settings since, and after doing a fresh install on a new machine, my accounts are already THERE on first boot. A lot of things are tedious in nix, but you do them ONCE.
sudo aptitude install thunderbird
sudo pacman -S thunderbird
I use Arch, by the way.
doas emerge --ask mail-client/thunderbird
Yay
something something
{ pkgs, … }:
{ whatever.i want these installed = [ pkgs.thunderbird ]; }
Don’t you mean
home.programs.thunderbird.enable = true;
?
i wouldn’t know correct nixos syntax or for that matter idiomatic usage when multiple paths are available if they kicked me in the balls
Nah, both ways are fine. The first one just installs the package, the second one enables the module, which installs the package + does a bunch of additional setup and gives you super convenient configuration options (like setting up mail accounts declaratively from nix)
The more I learn about nix the more I think I use arch btw is out of date as fuck.
It should be I use nix btw.
Idk. With Arch I felt like I constantly had to be on top of things. With nix, everything is rock solid and stable, and if I want to change or add something, I do that, once, and then it’s also rock solid until all eternity and across all my machines.
In total I might have spent more time interacting with nix already, but it feels less like “work” than with arch. Higher setup burden, almost zero maintenance burden and zero mental overhead.
Happy holidays btw
Edit: forgot to include the context. For the Thunderbird example, I have spent 1-2 hours once, 2 years ago, converting all the Thunderbird config options to nix, and adding my mail accounts through nix. I have not had to go into the Thunderbird settings since, and after doing a fresh install on a new machine, my accounts are already THERE on first boot. A lot of things are tedious in nix, but you do them ONCE.