• CronyAkatsuki@lemmy.cronyakatsuki.xyz
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    7 months ago

    I would hapilly use linux mint if only it didn’t use apt, honestly don’t like it as a package manager.

    Ghere is also the fact that mint will have older versions of packages, for example neovim which I need to be latest version always.

    That’s why I loved arch and gentoo before, for their package managers and roling distro nature.

    Now I’m on nixos unstable and it’s currently my favourite unbreakable distro, and the nix package manager is really good and making my own pqckages is really easy.

    • punkhazard@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      What do you not like about apt? Genuinely curious, never used anything besides apt/apt-get and aptitude. Am I missing out?

      • Norgur@fedia.io
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        7 months ago

        If you never do more than update, upgrade, install and remove, then just skip every post recommending different distros for their package manager. For you (as for most users), it will not make the slightest difference if you are using apt, packman, whatever else. If there’s something you want your package manager to do but it can’t, you’ll know. And if it comes to that, you can start diving into the different managers and which one is best suited for the specific thing you want to do.

        But it has to be mentioned that aptitude does not have super cow powers of course.

      • CronyAkatsuki@lemmy.cronyakatsuki.xyz
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        7 months ago

        You don’t miss out on anything if it does what you need.

        For me apt is just slow and clunky, don’t like the way some of the commands are and they are long, I prefer the way that pacman and portage do it where I can make commands be sinple and only be couple characters instead of whole words.

        I liked pacman because it was fast, and it was really easy to block a package from upgrading and downgrading packages is really easy.

        I liked portage because it worked with program’s sources so I was able to just remove part’s of program’s and their dependencies I didn’t need.

        I like nix now because of the way it manages dependencies, and for the fact that packaing programs in it is really easy to do.

        • Pan_Ziemniak@midwest.social
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          7 months ago

          That first sentence is what I love about Linux bros. For all the supposed gatekeeping and pretentiousness that goes on in these circles, i find this to be much more representative of my experience. As i said elsewhere in the thread, im really not very well versed in all that Linux is/can be. And yet, somehow someway, ive never really felt put down for it when seeking help.

          Before this comment, i honestly didnt know there could be such preferences to ur package managers.

        • Richard@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          For me, it’s quite the opposite. I love that apt commands are so close to natural language.

        • EntropyPure@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Nala is a great apt frontend. It supports parallel downloads of packages and speeds up the whole process up a lot.

          Not sure which commands irk you as too long. Nala makes a good overview of changes like which package is bumped to what version and where it stands now. So I basically only use

          nala upgrade
          

          and take it from there. Updates the sources, lists the diff for upgradable packages and ask me to go forward or abort.

          • CronyAkatsuki@lemmy.cronyakatsuki.xyz
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            7 months ago

            Just the pure act of installing a package is longer than with pacman for example.

            And the way that apt has seperated regular package and -dev packages irks me a lot when I need a library for something I need to make sure to install a =dev package compared to most other package manager where libraries are installed with the lackage itself.

      • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
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        7 months ago

        Nah, apt is great. I use Arch, but the package manager does not make a difference for me. I think I’d prefer apt for the user friendly terms to use it: apt search, apt install, apt remove, apt purge. Much nicer than the pacman equivalents I haven’t even bother to learn.

    • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      I don’t like apt too as much. But, interface-wise, you can make it way better with Nala, which is a frontend for it.

      NixOS is too complicated and demanding for most users, who aren’t programmers or hobbyists, imo.
      I prefer Fedora Atomic. It has the same pros (unbreakable, highly configurable with universal-blue.org, etc.) but feels way more user friendly.
      I use it with Distrobox on top, so I can use my package manager/ distro of choice (turned out to be Arch btw) on a extremely reliable system.

      For your case, you can replicate Mint by just installing the Cinnamon image from uBlue and applying some minimal tweaks.
      Then you get the user friendliness from Mint with the flexibility and unbreakability from NixOS. Do you like the idea? Just in case you get annoyed by NixOS in the future 🙃

      • gramgan@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        I like the idea of the fedora immutable distros, but the reliance on flatpak makes me a bit nervous (guess I’m just old-fashioned)… I think some kind of solution that puts a stable system like Debian or immutable fedora with a package manager like Nix might be very good (I know the U-Blue guys have been playing with homebrew?)

        • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          You can still install Nix (package manager) on Atomic, on uBlue, it even comes pre-installed afaik.

          And also, there’s Distrobox, which is totally enough if you prefer package managers over Flatpaks.
          I personally like the “reliance” on Flatpaks. I think it reduces the fragmentation and makes it easier for devs, but that’s just my opinion. Do as you prefer.

          • gramgan@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            Actually, I just tried both homebrew and Nix with a Debian 12 installation and I’m not impressed. Homebrew only ships CLI apps, and GUI applications installed with Nix famously don’t show up in application launchers… it seems like you don’t really get the features of Nix unless you use NixOS.

      • TheFadingOne@feddit.de
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        7 months ago

        I don’t think OSTree systems can quite reach the flexibility of NixOS. For instance with NixOS (with direnv and nix-shells) you can essentially swap out your running system based on the different directories you enter and I think that’s still just scraping the top of the iceberg. From my experience with OSTree (which is admittedly somewhat limited) I don’t think you can reach that level of flexibility.

        It’s still really cool, I don’t mean to shit on that, I’m just saying NixOS and OSTree have different pros and cons and use cases.

    • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      If for some unspecified reason you truly and absolutely need the latest version of something, nothing’s stopping you from pulling the repo and building it yourself.

    • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de
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      7 months ago

      I really like the idea of Nix, but having to have GitHub account to publish a package is a big no for me, even if I have one.

    • fiddlestix@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I’m in the same boat as you, but haven’t tried making my own packages. Is there a guide somewhere I can follow?