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maintaining a clean package tree
What do you mean by that, specifically? I looked that up online and maybe I'm a bit dumb, but I didn't find anything that made much sense
I don't know if that's a widely recognized term.
Pacman used to be really bad at removing unneeded dependencies. I think pretty much every package manager has this facility now. For instant apt auto remove.
Suppose you installed gnome to try it out, gnome installs like 1000000 packages. The thing about some of those dependencies is that they're really useful. It's not uncommon for another package you have installed to use it as an optional dependency. In that case it doesn't get flagged for autoremoval when you uninstall gnome.
When you apply this logic a couple layers deep they start to compound.
Also libraries and random python scripts tend to just exist forever in your system long after you used it lol.
I started developing the habit of checking what dependencies are being installed and to uninstall immediately when I realize I don't need it.
This logic applies to language specific managers like cargo or pip too.
They all have really good tooling to figure out leaves, orphaned nodes etc. I just didn't start using those until I got into the arch hype.
I see. I suppose figuring out which things to get rid of takes some getting used to, but thank you for the advice!
Yeah, you will invariably remove something crucial haha. The nice thing with arch is that usually you can fix it without too much fuss.
Me learning to use Linux was like teaching a child that can't feel pain to not touch fire.
I'm quite excited but also mildly worried about Arch. I am currently on EndeavourOS, so I'm used to day-to-day usage of an Arch-based system, but I do worry about not following some best practices that screw me over in the long run during the install or forgetting some crucial security things. I do believe 95% of what I could mess up is going to be covered in the install guide, but who knows what I'll overlook. And I know Archinstall exists, but I might as well stay on EOS if I was gonna use that, as I primarily intend this to be a learning opportunity. We'll see how things go!
I agree. I think that's why nix-os is getting so popular these days.
I love the idea of declarative system builds even beyond just reproducability. The idea that you can essentially make your own distro without much difficulty is really cool.
Plus all the benefits of roll backs, light backups, etc.
Plus if you can dig deep enough you can craft a system that never breaks by pinning certain versions.
One of these days I want to check it out. As well as LFS. Oh but for the want of time.
About NixOS specifically, I actually made a post on [email protected] and overall the feedback seemed to be that Nix is a mixed bag, and that unless you want to duplicate your system a bunch of times, it's probably smarter to stick to Arch, and a few people said I should use immutable Fedora for some reason despite that not being the question.