[Nix-dev] The Church of Suckless NixOS is looking for followers

[Jan Malakhovski]

Stefan Huchler <stefan.huchler at mail.de> writes:

>> * Our common goal is to have fun (see below) and to get a NixOS system
>>   that can run using only suckless tools [1].
>
> which is a subject oppinion, which tools does suck and which not.
>

Correct.

>> * Some of us want to drop GRUB in favor of running on top of minimal
>>   Xen payload on Coreboot firmware and isolate everything like in
>>   QubesOS,
>
>> * We like LISP, but we don't think package expressions should be written
>>   in LISP just for the sake of LISP. Nor do we like the bloated GNU
>>   tools. GuixSD is out of question.
>
> And why is it for the sake of lisp? Have you proof that guixsd chose
> lisp just because of lisp despite some disadvantages? What are the
> disadvantages of lisp package expressions?

We won't argue. You are free to like and use whatever you want. We
collectively hate systemd, pulseaudio and dbus and want

  du -csh $(nix-store -qR /run/current-system)

for a usable (for our definition of usable) system to be megabytes, not
gigabytes. Putting LISP on top of Nix goes against that goal.

> Blooted GNU tools? So you like the horrible inferior tools that come
> with android? its always good if software has less features?

Yes. No, Android uses Toolbox, not even Busybox, and certainly not
Suckless. No, but Suckless provide 90% of the features with 1-10% of the
code.

See for yourself:

http://git.suckless.org/sbase/tree/
http://git.suckless.org/ubase/tree/

and then compare that to the single GNU grep

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/tree

> So you want to have a distro not only for the 2% linux users but only
> for the 1% pc that run with coreboot, I am very optimistic that you will
> get much contribution and feedback :)

That is a valid point, but you'd be surprised how many people (e.g. most
of us) use old Thinkpads. Used ones are super cheap too, so no problem
experimenting. Flashing coreboot (after you managed to build it with the
correct config and blobs, nix helps here, as always) takes $5 of
hardware (+$35 if you or someone you know doesn't have RPi or BB, the
RPi and BB, both are then reusable for other cool stuff) and minutes of
time.

Also, its not like we require you to abolish everything you like to even
consider helping the cause. I'm not gonna abolish my XMonad any time
soon, regardless of GHC closure size.

> But thanks for the post, made me laugh.

You are welcome.

Cheers,
  Jan