Well, dummy plugs are also kinda useful on windows - can't seamlessly switch to client's resolution without setting up the resolution profiles first, and that requires a device to apply the profiles to.
Also, you can create virtual displays fairly easy on Xorg, but yes, the entire sunshine setup is infinitely easier on windows.
Who cares if it breaks? You can always just boot a previous generation! Need to rebuild without the breakage? You surely must now how to add a package from an earlier commit via flakes by now, right?
Well, if you can't figure out how to integrate the flake in 30 seconds by month 6, you clearly have a skill issue. Or a "sleeping at night instead of writing nix" issue. Better use a noob-friendly distro like arch.
Seriously though, despite all the flaws, there is no other packaging system where I can as painlessly use random forks of packages. I absolutely love how I'm able to run gnome-mobile on my x64 tablet. True to the NixOS way, I found the overlay on someone's GitHub, there were only the files, no further instructions.
I also have a USB with live debian at all times, because you never know when you stumble upon a thing that just can't work with NixOS
Who needs documentation? The code is self-documenting! The entire thing's on GitHub, just check the issues to figure out what's going on! Didn't work? Sorry, the thing got broke a few months ago. Just go through the commit history and I'm sure you'll be up and running in no time!
I've also made a module that fixes your specific issue and uploaded it to my self hosted gitlab instance. The server is down right now? Well, isn't that better? Now you can make the thing yourself! Remember to upload your thing to your GitHub, name it something like "nixos" and never mention it anywhere.
if you already have an esim on the phone it will not be wiped during installation - esims reside on a completely separate chip.
all "difficult to set up" information is exactly about that - setting up, that, in any case, is just about enabling specific google services that you can disable afterwards.
my phone has about 5 esims installed, I regularly wipe my phone, they are unaffected.
I've read somewhere that the massive explosion in popularity happened in 2020 when someone stole and cloned the PCs that were used to install the ROMs on Android phones. By then GrapheneOS head dev's conflict with CopperheadOS team was very widely publicized and GrapheneOS's security debate was impossible to miss.
Anyway, here's a phone and a messaging app that will only be provided to you and other criminals, it is very secure
I always wondered why anyone would choose to use that instead of Signal and GrapheneOS. I mean, removing cameras and microphones is a great tactic, but why use some shady software instead of something that was proven to work many times? Even if that service was authentic, how long would it take for law enforcement to learn about it, seize the servers and collect metadata? There must be people who are competent in tech and also happen to be cartel members.
Yes, I mean the 2018 era SDM845 bunch of phones. They mostly work. While postmarketOS is the community that made linux on phones possible, it is not the only thing that you can run on these, there is actual choice. I personally liked Mobian very much.
Making linux phones more widely adopted will require wider community interest and halium is just not the way forward.
Edit: screenshot to illustrate my point, my OnePlus 6T running NixOS in UEFI mode (based on this writeup by /u/chayleaf@lemmy.ml:
spoiler
why? why is this thing being posted so much everywhere?
linux phone
actually halium
hardware kill switches
I guess I just can't see the utility vs leaving the phone at home since I don't arrange 3AM deals by the docks
android app support
all we see is a shaky recording of a screen that looks like some gui to control waydroid settings
we have actual hardware now that works really well, has almost mainline linux kernel support, does not rely on oem hacks and proprietary blobs on top of android kernels to be useful, and is available now for $50 second hand in good condition
installing and setting up every month is a bit of a pain
Repent of your sins and turn away from imperative ways, for the Kingdom of Reproducibility is at hand. Convert your heart to NixOS and accept Its grace; this is not a suggestion, but a command for your eternal soul.
I got mine used from a local ebay-like site. Can't really justify buying new hardware most of the time. Thinkpads in general are really easy to buy second-hand in great condition when corporations replace them. Z-series were not very popular so getting it was a lot harder than a T14 or P1, but still, there were some great options.
Complex things that someone has already done are infinitely easier in nixos - stuff like having zfs as root filesystem is literally two lines in the config (and the magic is that it is very, very hard to break).
Complex things that are your own edge case will make you want to pull your hair out - I wanted to run immich on a raspberry pi 5 with native 16k page size, long story short, I still don't have immich.
On the other hand, if by "normie" you mean "running a browser and some flatpaks", nixos is likely the best distro that will work right out of the box - the graphical installer will generate a good config, the out of the box hardware support is the best in my experience, breakage is almost impossible. Automatic updates will not work though and there's no gui that will prompt you to do so at all.