| 21 May 2025 |
 emily | you're already paying ≥ $100 for the switch and the SoC can run Linux, it's literally free | 15:42:43 |
 matthewcroughan - nix.zone | You need state? I don't get why | 15:43:38 |
| emily | to… save the configuration? | 15:44:15 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | I have my bpi-r4 operating without state, and it is just running nixos, and it can do managed switch stuff on the 4 1G ports it has | 15:44:18 |
| emily | so that you don't have to set it every time it powers on? | 15:44:21 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | oh right, yeah so that's not hard to do in micropython, or embassy, etc | 15:44:52 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | whatever you choose, you're always gonna have some way of persisting config values | 15:45:00 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | I just argue that linux/ext4 is like, overkill for what a managed switch has to do | 15:45:24 |
| emily | it would cost more to develop for no gain | 15:45:30 |
| emily | there is no reason | 15:45:39 |
| emily | why MicroPython? they could write it in assembly | 15:45:43 |
| emily | then the executable code would be even smaller or whatever, and nobody would care | 15:45:50 |
| emily | idk. you pick the weirdest things to get hung up about | 15:46:03 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | It's not really about being that minimal, it's just about using the right tool for the job | 15:46:07 |
| emily | operating system services are a good thing. like running water and electricity. infrastructure is useful | 15:46:15 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | linux is pretty hard to maintain compared to some micro code | 15:46:19 |
| emily | I promise you they are making plenty use of Linux functionality | 15:46:26 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | * linux is pretty hard to maintain compared to some microcontroller code | 15:46:31 |
| emily | surely more complex and beefier hardware than the machines Linux was originally written for I'd imagine | 15:46:43 |
| emily | yep, 500 MHz MIPS | 15:47:56 |
| emily | oh god. oh god MIPS | 15:48:00 |
| emily | oh god that's going to be fun with NixOS | 15:48:04 |
| emily | time to become the NixOS MIPS maintainer | 15:48:17 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | Well I wouldn't want to use NixOS on it, but I would like to use Nix to compile the Linux kernel and everything else that's running on the device | 15:48:33 |
| emily | (except they surely wouldn't even fit NixOS) | 15:48:38 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | liminix is the thing that makes it easy to re-use openwrt's kernels, build them with nix and then run an environment that isn't nixos, but is built by nix, on mips devices | 15:49:38 |
| emily | some of these things have nuts specs. "128 MB flash, 4 GB RAM" | 15:50:26 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | yeah that's way enough to run full nixos with systemd and everything actually | 15:50:45 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | if you use systemd/musl lol | 15:50:51 |
| emily | no it's not. | 15:51:00 |
