this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
99 points (85.6% liked)
Linux
48224 readers
624 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Having options is not the same thing as documenting those options; well outlined documentation doesn't just dictate how to do something but also points out what you may want to do i.e. filling out unknown-unknowns.
Just because NixOS makes for an excellent DevOps template doesn't mean it can't also be an excellent platform for hacking together random crap. I understand that NixOS advertises itself as the former, but when I say "promises to be" I don't mean "makes a promise to be", but "has promise for being".
Features like: a common configuration interface, safe rollback, atomic changes, nixos-hardware all are features that enable developers to safely hack together solutions, and then have an excellent log detailing what they just did.
Agreed. The point is however that, with NixOS options, you do not necessarily need such documentation for unknown-knowns.
With many things however, we can simply delegate to the upstream documentation for some thing. See i.e. the paperless extra config example. We don't need to tell users how to configure their paperless, we just tell them that any upstream option goes into this settings option as an attrset.
NixOS options do to a degree fill out unknown-unknowns though, see I.e. the steam-hardware example. I've stumbled upon many handy options by searching for related options.
While the initial "hacking the crap together" phase is indeed harder in most cases, maintaining these hacks is much simpler thanks to overrides/overlays and the additive nature of NixOS options.
That quality can arguably make it "excellent" too.