overview for 7ai

Because modern web is bloatware. Too much javascript, CSS, ads and cookie popups. A phone's hardware and internet speeds are generally not as fast as a desktop. So, it takes much longer to render on a phone.

Also, a lot websites nowadays deliberately make their mobile web experience shitty (cough ** reddit cough) to force their users to install their app.

I switched from Nixos to void Linux. Here's my experience so far. by 7ai in c/linux@lemmy.ml

[-] 7ai@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah there's a lot of state accumulation especially in home folder which I clear manually from time to time.

In Nixos you can configure the impermanence module to clear unwanted state on your system and make it a "fresh install" on every reboot.

I switched from Nixos to void Linux. Here's my experience so far. by 7ai in c/linux@lemmy.ml

[-] 7ai@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 year ago

You mean in terms of how fast it feels? I have never heard anyone saying this before. Can you share some details and perhaps some tips to improve performance on Nixos?

What hardware do you run Nixos on and do you modify and rebuild a lot of packages on nixpkgs?

I switched from Nixos to void Linux. Here's my experience so far. by 7ai in c/linux@lemmy.ml

[-] 7ai@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Arch and void are very similar except void has a smaller community and much smaller set of packages to install. Arch also has better documentation.

Void is considered more lightweight because it uses runit instead of systemd and a choice to use musl instead of glibc.

I feel for most, arch is a better choice of the three.

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I switched from Nixos to void Linux. Here's my experience so far. (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by 7ai@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml

71 comments fedilink

I hopped from arch (2010-2019) to Nixos (2019-2023). I had my issues with it but being a functional programmer, I really liked the declarative style of configuring your OS. That was until last week. I decided to try out void Linux (musl). I'm happy with it so far.

Why did I switch?

Nix is extremely slow and data intensive (compared to xbps). I mean sometimes 100-1000x or more. I know it is not a fair comparison because nix is doing much more. Even for small tweaks or dependency / toolchain update it'll download/rebuild all packages. This would mean 3-10GB (or more) download on Nixos for something that is a few KB or MB on xbps.
Everything is noticeably slower. My system used way more CPU and Ram even during idle. CPU was at 1-3% during idle and my battery life was 2 to 3.5h. Xfce idle ram usage was 1.5 GB on Nixos. On Void it's around 0.5GB. I easily get 5-7h of battery life for my normal usage. It is 10h-12h if I am reading an ebook.

Nix disables a lot of compiler optimisations apparently for reproducibility. Maybe this is the reason?

Just a lot of random bugs. Firefox would sometimes leak memory and hang. I have only 8 GB of ram. WiFi reconnecting all the time randomly. No such issues so far with void.
Of course the abstractions and the language have a learning curve. It's harder for a beginner to package or do something which is not already exposed as an option. (This wasn't a big issue for me most of the time.)

For now, I'll enjoy the speed and simplicity of void. It has less packages compared to nix but I have flatpak if needed. So far, I had to install only Android studio with it.

My verdict is to use Nixos for servers and shared dev environments. For desktop it's probably not suitable for most.