 So I've started a little project that I'm using for friends and family. The goal is to create a "chromebook like" unbreakable computer to give to basic users who know nothing about Linux and won't need to ever worry about updates / upgrades. Thoughts and feedback appreciated 16 comments
 @underlap yup. Of course I would! I simply called it book since 99% of the computers I'm using this on are laptops @codemonkeymike If I understand, you are taking on the job of being NixOS admin for these people (that's the purpose of pulling the git repo?). That is a lot of trust to put in you! Possibly okay for family, but I would never ever recommend or expect that kind of trust from a friend, much less a stranger. @danielittlewood I've been giving normies Linux mint for years. It's as easy as it gets and people still don't do updates. With this, they're automatic and in the background. You don't even have to decide to do them or worry about potential conflict messages etc. It's not for you and me. It's for your parents ya know @codemonkeymike @danielittlewood I'm an actual parent and am using Cinnamon (albeit I have a tech background). There are still some problems I encounter on an occasional basis, but then again, I am not a typical user of my age. Most older users use their system for a set number of tasks and stick to those; they don't vary things that much from week to week.
@codemonkeymike @danielittlewood but will that actually upgrade you versions? Like from debian 12 to 13? I can't imagine that.. but maybe! Either way, Nix is also providing some immutability too so people like my dad CAN'T break it even if they wanted too. And the software store is limited to just whats on flathub.. which is safer for normies @danielittlewood sure. I'm acting as the repo of sorts I guess. We all put our trusts in things like that. However, this is dead simple to see what's going on. However, you could simply comment out the git pull line and everything will work, but your channel won't change. So no upgrades. Unless you switch to unstable channel @codemonkeymike I like this idea. It has a lot in common with what Universal Blue/Bluefin are trying to achieve, except one is image based and one is Nix based. They both have a lot of merit I think. The challenge they both have on Chromebooks is disk space unfortunately. I think Nix might have the upper hand there but not by a huge amount. I donโt know how we truly solve it. @sam exactly. I actually have a 16 gig Chromebook I'm testing on. Linux mint is even too big for it. But nixbook only uses about 12 gigs all said and done. Not a lot of extra room but still @codemonkeymike This is cool. I recommend using flakes, because they allow you to freeze the nixos channel to an exact version. If you do this, you can test the configuration in github actions and if it builds - it will most likely build fine for the users. @knazarov I've actually still need to dig into flakes. I'm still kinda put off by the experimental tag on them. But I know they're super accepted. But otherwise, this config is dead simple! @codemonkeymike There really isn't much to it if you're keeping things simple. My flake file is here https://git.knazarov.com/knazarov/nixos/src/branch/master/flake.nix . If you remove configuration for servers it's about 60 lines of code and just loads configuration.nix as you would when not using flakes. Anyhow, good luck on the journey. |
Gregory's Server
@codemonkeymike looks neat! ๐ฏ