rutrum

I'm been wanting to move over my main desktop for almost a year now. But from 3+ years of tinkering, installing applications, and configurations Ive been super hesitant. The jump from Ubuntu to NixOS would be a big one. I have a laptop running nixos thats given me some exposure to the nix language, but when it comes to my main rig, I still have the worry of "what if something I need wont be available?" and "what if I forget something?"

Well I finally tried home manager and wow, its the absolute perfect way to slowly transition to nixos. I'm slowly going through my package managers (cargo, npm, pip, apt, snap) and checking for applications that I can just drop into my home.nix. And every now and then I see an app I cant install (say, vtracer from cargo, very cool app). Well, I just make a mark and eventually I'll build my own derivation around it.

Home manager has been easing my worries as I make the transition. For those of you also unsure, I recommend integrating with home manager. You can do such small jumps at a time, no need to go full blown nix all at once.

What apps do you recommend for people? Which apps did you start integrating into your day to day once you discovered they were there? Which apps solved a problem you faced?

What do you as a fail safe when there isnt a flake or nix package for what you need, and you don't have the time or ability to create it?

Here's my particular example. I need the beta version of OpenSCAD, which is only delivered as a flatpak in the beta flatpak channel, which I have tried but have been unsuccessful in doing. I havent even attempted building from source. Only the stable version is in nixpkgs. In this case, what would you do?

And in general, what do you do? Install things using a different package manager, like pip, npm, cargo, etc and manage at the user level? Do you run a VM? Docker? Let me know what your backup plan is on NixOS.

I've bought Pine64 products before (pinephone and recently the pinetime) but I've heard Zach Freedman (void star labs) mention this before and rave about it. I wanted to hear from the ergo community what they thought about it before I bought one to start my keyboard building journey.

In addition, if I should buy one, what tips do you recommend be purchased? It looks like I can buy long/short versions of fine/gross tips. What's best for keyboard building? Here's a link to their pinecil products.

My understanding is like this. For multi-user computers, you'd manage packages with home manager. If you're developing a project or need some kind of specific built tool or dependency, define in it in a flake.nix or shell.nix or build.nix in the project folder. And for single user computers, or maybe admin accounts install at NixOS configuration.

Whats the intent for each location? The current question Im asking myself is "why install home manager when Im on a single user instance and can just update configuration.nix?"

Hi there. There's a group on reddit that hasn't made it very clear about moving to Lemmy. I wanted to start a new community for r/ErgoMechKeyboards, and wanted to share here. I posted my own keyboard for the first time on this community. Cheers!