I have been trying some of the immutable linux OSes because from what I understand they are more modern and feature better security and reliability. What I have found so far is shocking. Half of these don’t support my laptop (probably because it’s nvidia optimus). Some I tried like guix were very difficult to install, configure, and use with sprase documentation. Good luck trying to use KDE, wayland, or pipewire for example. BlendOS was notably better and could at least run on my laptop but chocked with nvidia driver issues.
I have switched to pop os on my laptop for now but looking at alternatives and what to install on my desktop.
I’m not sure how good a suggestion this is for you and your optimus usecase, but have you checked out the uBlue spins of Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite/etc? They pre-include stuff that Fedora won’t ship, like non-free codecs and nvidia drivers.
I’m prepping a swap from Arch Linux to my own Silverblue image based on their DIY guide at the moment, mainly to see how the whole immutable aspect feels day-to-day. The image-based updates in the background are just a bonus.
That’s what I am currently trying to install thanks to some suppressingly helpful people on Reddit. Is there any particular iso you recommend?
Have you tried NixOS? I recommend that over guix.
I was told it’s very difficult and has bad documentation. Funnily enough that’s exactly the experience I have had with guix.
Compared to guix NixOS is significantly ahead. “difficult” is to each their own. For me, NixOS is the easiest to do certain things. But those things are what i use a computer for and might not match what you do.
As for docs - nothing beats Arch :)
It has terrible documentation, no doubt about it. However, depending on your setup requirements, the installation procedure can be quite acceptable. It should finally have a graphical installer.
If you’re not doing anything complicated like programming, hosting your own services, or planning on using rare software that you yourself have to package, it can be a very low maintenance OS.
My single biggest tip: before installing something, check if it has an “option”
For example, if you want to use KDE as your desktop environment, you need the
services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.enableoption. Use the option search. It’s often easier than listing the individual packages manually and writing their configuration manually.The reason for this is that nixos doesn’t have “meta” packages. Those are packages that just contain other packages. Most package only has the absolute minimum it needs to be built - not run. The KDE desktop environment requires many packages to run.
Additionally, package configuration normally happens outside of the package in a declarative manner. You don’t write
/etc/network.d/111_startup.sh. That’s either in an optionenvironment.etc"network.d/111_startup.sh"or (making this up)networking.startupScriptswhich puts a value in toenvironment.etc"network.d/{script.name}.
Do no be afraid to ask for help. The nix community is aware of the documentation disaster it has on its hands.
Yes, the nix foundation is slow and doesn’t have its own wiki - no idea why.
My set-up actually is fairly complicated. I actually have a degree in CS and am looking for tech related jobs. I have decided to go a different direction for now but I intend to learn the nix package manager at some point. Partly because it comes included with my new OS (Bazzite/ublue), and partly because I hear it’s useful and pays well in industry.
This didn’t boot either. Though I hear there is an Nvidia version that might work. How does this compare to fedora ublue?
Optimus is such a pain. Definitely not a good start for a linux laptop. Maybe you can turn it off in the bios or set the primary GPU to prefer the integrated. Or maybe boot with nomodeset in the kernel options and install the Nvidia drivers. And I don’t know if you have a G05 or better Nvidia card, but if you do it should work with Wayland. Who knows, though! Personally, I would sooner sell the laptop and get one that is compatible without all the hackery.
It’s just easy mode for keeping your computer up to date without having to do anything beyond the initial setup. You can read about it here.
I think it’s set to use integrated graphics by default. I don’t know what a G05 is but it’s fairly recent (3050Ti). I am not gonna sell the most powerful laptop I have had that also has CUDA support just because some minor Linux distros don’t work. I could understand if this was guix or parabola, but it’s not. Nvidia should at least boot okay especially given it uses Intel by default and nouveau exists. If you can’t get that right I don’t think I have much confidence in your OS. Ublue has varients for Nvidia hardware, and arch has support too, as does Pop_OS!
