| 17 Mar 2025 |
 K900 | But the docs aren't great | 05:58:23 |
| K900 | And that's not something you can really fix in a day | 05:58:35 |
| K900 | And by asking questions you'll hopefully learn how to find answers yourself | 05:58:47 |
 nzbr (they/it) | Without knowing where you're stuck right now, some general advice I can give you: Once you get the hang of the syntax and nix itself, you can get by with https://search.nixos.org pretty well for most things. Other than that, try to read and understand code others wrote that does something similar to what you need (don't just copy/paste that blindly, try playing around with it a bit) | 06:01:27 |
| nzbr (they/it) | The search also links to the file where the option you're looking at is defined. That can help you understand what happpens in the background | 06:02:33 |
 balanced_design | Redacted or Malformed Event | 06:20:49 |
| balanced_design | "once you get the hang of the syntax and nix itself" I wish it was this easy as these few words. Ive spent hours on the most basic and fundamental looking things. From getting the thing installed without errors, to getting the thing to have internet, to rebuild switching with a configuration.nix I can view in my IDE, to how to install packages from different channels or even searching different channels like unstable-small. | 06:23:19 |
| balanced_design | Thanks for the reassurence K900... it means alot | 06:23:24 |
| K900 | Generally multiple channels is not something you should care about this early | 06:23:43 |
| K900 | (or, really, ever, but that's a different story) | 06:23:51 |
| nzbr (they/it) | I really wish there was a good resource I could point you to that really explains the few foundational things that have to click into place to understand nix, but as far as I am aware, that just does not exist... If it helps: Everyone I've watched get into nix was struggling just like you, until it suddenly made sense to them. I'm sure you'll get to that point eventually | 06:26:54 |
| K900 | I think the thing that we are very bad at teaching, and the thing that makes it click for many people, is that Nix is just another programming language | 06:28:11 |
| K900 | Most intuition you have for programming in other languages does actually also apply to Nix | 06:28:24 |
| K900 | Even though it looks kinda weird | 06:28:39 |
| balanced_design | I dont know if "until it makes sense" is the problem. To solve these problems Ive just had to figure out what the actual correct thing is because the instructions on the docs, form posts, or blog posts are wrong or have multiple interpretations. Ive had few errors due to my own stupidity or something else like that | 06:30:39 |
| balanced_design | Some blog posts have mentioned that. It does seem like nix has cheetsheets like other programing languages | 06:31:45 |
| balanced_design | * I dont know if "until it makes sense" is the problem. To solve these problems Ive just had to figure out what the actual correct thing is because the instructions on the docs, form posts, or blog posts are wrong(causes errors or dont work) or have multiple interpretations. Ive had few errors due to my own stupidity or something else like that | 06:32:00 |
| balanced_design | * Some blog posts have mentioned that. It does seem like nix has cheatsheets like other programing languages | 06:32:09 |
| balanced_design | * Some blog posts have mentioned that.It does seem like nix has cheatsheets like other programing languages | 06:32:20 |
| balanced_design | * Some blog posts have mentioned that.
It does seem like nix has cheatsheets like other programing languages | 06:32:30 |
| balanced_design | * I dont know if "until it makes sense" is the problem. To solve these problems Ive just had to figure out what the actual correct thing is because the instructions on the docs, form posts, or blog posts are wrong(causes errors or dont work) or have multiple interpretations. Ive had few errors due to anything that feels like "oh it just hadnt clicked". | 06:33:33 |
| balanced_design | * I dont know if "until it makes sense" is the problem. To solve these problems Ive just had to figure out what the actual correct thing is because the instructions on the docs, form posts, or blog posts are wrong(causes errors or dont work) or have multiple interpretations. I havent had any errors due to anything that feels like "oh it just hadnt clicked". | 06:34:27 |
| K900 | Well the thing is, after it clicks, it'll be generally much easier for you to figure out why something isn't working | 06:34:51 |
| balanced_design | Thats reasonable I could see that being a possibility. | 06:37:55 |
| balanced_design | As far as I understand based on https://search.nixos.org/packages I need unstable to get fully up to date packages | 06:38:22 |
| K900 | Then you should switch your entire system to run on unstable, generally | 06:38:39 |
| K900 | Mixing channels is rarely a good idea | 06:38:45 |
| balanced_design | Wait why? Why would packages accross channel boundries interact in a bad way? | 06:39:37 |
| K900 | There are, uh, quirks | 06:42:10 |
| K900 | Notably around how we handle graphics drivers | 06:42:19 |
