this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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For sure, immutability is a point of the distro, but I have other reasons for using it. Namely, hardware-enablement and nice dev experience additions.
There's definitely value in immutability, but sometimes I wish I could temporarily disable it so I can do what I need to, while easily retaining those changes on updates.
The main program that I'm unable to install is
espanso
. It's an open source text-expansion program that has become invaluable to me and the way that I type.I can build it from source, create an RPM for it, and even try layering it with
rpm-ostree
, but even then, I have the problem of missing libraries, likewxGTK*
. Sure, I can technically manually acquire those libs and useldconfig
to configure them in a writable directory, but at that point, you're basically suffering through a dependency nightmare that isn't worth maintaining.For stuff like that, I really wish that I could just scrap the immutability and simply install some more system-level packages like that more easily.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the reason I can't simply layer the
wxGTK*
libs and the RPM manually:espanso
requires slightly different versions of the libs, and if I could simply symlink the newer versions that are available in the Silverblue repositories to the slightly older versions thatespanso
requires, I could probably get it to work.I'm on Bazzite (similar to Bluefin) and I installed espanso via Nix. It was just one command to install it and one setcap to grant it permissions. The good thing about using Nix instead of Distrobox or Flatpak is that you don't run into annoying sandbox limitations, since these binaries live on your real filesystem and can access all system resources.
The key thing to make it work is that the setcap command needs to be run against the actual nix store executable and not the symlink in your home folder. Also, this is also why a Distrobox export of this would never work, because you'd be setcapping only the symlink which is useless.
That's a brilliant idea! I don't know why using Nix didn't occur to me.
What did you do to configure Nix on Bazzite (
ujust nix
, or something similar)? I'm willing to rebase just to try it, if necessary.Yeah originally I used ujust on my old PC, but that command is gone in the latest Bazzite for whatever reason, so (on my new PC) I installed it using the command here: https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/nix-installer