[TriLUG] Ubuntu 18.04 Problems

[Ken M via TriLUG]

I have never found Ubuntu to be a good long term distro. It is a good
way to jump into linux but over the long haul, not so much. I would
rather run Sid than Ubuntu most days.

These days I use NixOS instead. The nix package manager with the
declarative configuration and package management as well as rollbacks is
great.

Also ZFS integration for linux is about the best I have seen. Giving me
the snapshots to roll back to if the nix rollback does not work. I have
automatic zfs snapshots configured.

Only cons to nix:

1. a bit disk hungry if you don't clean up older rollbacks, but there is
a command to handle collecting "garbage". Also zfs with compression
enabled helps a bit.

2. Any shell script that the shebang does not start off with a
/usr/bin/env will not work. Env is the only thing even in the path.
Everything else is dynamically linked through the nix store. This can be
a headache migrating some things. But it is a small price to pay and
frankly I consider it the right way to do things to shebang env.

3. The syntax is foreign, and of course yet another package manager. But
then so would going to pacman be such a thing, but you get near the arch
bleeding edge with nix, the selection you would have with the aur, and
you can roll back when an update does poorly.

A mention on the last one, the Yet another package manager thing. The
beauty of nix is I can use the package manager everywhere. So on my
chromebook the linux container is debian stretch. System level packages
are installed with apt, but more user focused apps and especially
programming needs are installed with nix. I can use it on a Mac if I
owned one. When I worked at a shop that was windows I could use nix on
the windows subsystem for linux. So the yet another package manager has
become the package manager I can use everywhere.

Ken