| 21 May 2025 |
 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 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | it actually is though | 15:51:04 |
| emily | no NixOS system closure fits in 128 megs. | 15:51:07 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | I made one a few weeks ago, it does fit | 15:51:19 |
 hexa | https://www.liminix.org/ | 15:51:35 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | there's still plenty of ways to slim it down further | 15:51:36 |
 magic_rb | In reply to @matthewcroughan:defenestrate.it
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 You do have state ffs. Your network configuration is state, go and remove all the network config from your nixos build and see how far you get. It just happens that we bundle the config with the binaries. But you cannot ship a static image on consumer or even enterprise switches. "Oh you want reconfigure something? Better install Nix!" | 15:51:45 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | I just wasn't sure what state was being referred to | 15:52:12 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | Point is, if all you're trying to do, is configure the asic, maybe you don't need linux for that and you can just do it with a small arduino program. | 15:52:55 |
