| 23 Jul 2021 |
 matthewcroughan - nix.zone | * Nix lets you create anything you want on top. It's a language to build an OS. | 03:38:28 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | NixOS is one such OS built with Nix. | 03:38:33 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | It's the reference distribution. | 03:38:39 |
 David Arnold (blaggacao) | "Hey, what's your name?" ... | 03:38:58 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | "I see you live in Amercias/Bogota, is that correct?" ... | 03:39:21 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | "Do you want gnome, kde,...?" | 03:39:41 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | You could even make an Alexa skill that writes Nix files. "Hey Alexa, enable gnome3 and install tmate into my system environment". | 03:39:48 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | But people aren't going to switch away from the imperative way unless they value reproducibility, which not everyone does. | 03:40:15 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | See, there is actually a lot of potential in the declarative model and leveraging nix> | 03:40:33 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | * See, there is actually a lot of potential in the declarative model and leveraging `nix`. | 03:40:38 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | And by doing what Nix does, it absolutely does make a whole host of things more difficult by design. | 03:40:48 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | Look at Discord. You cannot make a nix package for it. | 03:40:50 |
 davidak | the declarative style in git repo is great for sysadmins, developers and enthusiasts, but i think a casual computer user don't need it. when they only use one computer, they can just use a gui that changes configuration.nix | 03:41:44 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | In reply to @davidak:matrix.org
the declarative style in git repo is great for sysadmins, developers and enthusiasts, but i think a casual computer user don't need it. when they only use one computer, they can just use a gui that changes configuration.nix Not a gui, though. A typeform-style experience. | 03:42:11 |
| davidak | and that can be the default on desktop iso | 03:42:16 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | I think GUI is just a placeholder here for "onboarding experience". | 03:42:54 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | Users have to care about the reproducibility aspect. Otherwise, it's lost on them. | 03:43:12 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | Most people don't even care about privacy. | 03:43:19 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | It's a hard sell. | 03:43:21 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | Android + Google = New phone, all my apps come with me | 03:44:03 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | NixOS + Linux = New computer, all my apps come with me | 03:44:11 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | If we can do that, I think that's good. | 03:44:16 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | Maybe we can start the other way round and make the IDE situation better and work upwards from there to a guided declarative model? | 03:44:18 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | But yeah, you have to onboard people to do that, and that's the difficult part. | 03:44:25 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | Linux itself already has a tough time onboarding. | 03:44:31 |
| davidak | David Arnold: you can do that, but that's not what i'm talking about | 03:45:05 |
| davidak | IDE is for developers. people should be able to use computers without the need to become developers | 03:45:42 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | From a marketing perspective, I think we would be wasting time if we tried to get "regular users" first, instead of second, because I think the market share of people who would care is lower than the developers/sysadmins. | 03:46:14 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | * From a marketing perspective, I think we would be wasting time if we tried to get "regular users" first, instead of second, because I think the market share of people who would care about reproducibiity is lower than the developers/sysadmins. | 03:46:20 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | We have to define the user persona that any idea is targeted at, each is different. Let's take my wife. | 03:46:30 |
