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0 pointsgoodpoint3y ago0 comments

> Is NixOS a cult?

Rather than being a cult in itself, there's a crowd of very vocal fanboys similar to the RIIR stike force. Pestering people with "why don't you use $thing" is not good advocacy.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

yjftsjthsd-h3y ago· 1 in thread

Point of order: I didn't say "you should use nix", I said "oi, nix is actively doing that thing you said was impossible", and suggested that they should do that themselves.

goodpointOP3y ago

I didn't say "you are acting like a fanboy", I said "some vocal minorities are fanboying" and suggested that they should not do it.

zitsarethecure3y ago· 1 in thread

Indeed the communication factor is critical. I've been around long enough to see plenty of good tech fail simply because backers are not very good communicators and I think the top level comment is a great example of this. I am just a lowly end user, I just want to be able to install and run the latest version of PrusaSlicer or Zoom on whatever Linux distribution I am using. I don't obviously see how to do that with nix and I don't really want to spend the time to figure it out, while the folks behind flatpak seem to have made it a trivial experience.

pxc3y ago

> I don't obviously see how to do [install the latest version of Zoom] with nix and I don't really want to spend the time to figure it out

  nix-env -iA nixpkgs.zoom-us

or if you prefer,

  nix profile install nixpkgs#zoom-us

That said, the Zoom package in Nixpkgs is (IIRC) actually extracted from the upstream Snap distribution of Zoom, and the Flatpak version of Zoom is actually the one I last used on NixOS. :)

(For proprietary software like Zoom, I think Flatpak might be preferable even to many Nix users like me.)

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