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| Linux Foundation Training |
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Make a virtual webcam device (by Noel on 2022-07-11 01:46:39 GMT from United States)
Why does Jesse call a v4l2loopback device "fake"? Perhaps "virtual" (or "emulated") is better, like a virtual PDF printer or a loopback network interface 127.0.0.1. From the point of view of software everything is real as long as it implements the interface of "real" phenomena.
Doesn't the "-r" switch of ffmpeg set fps for video streaming like it does for output video files? If it doesn't then the v4l2loopback kernel module should have a mechanism to block the producer thread as appropriate if it's writing too fast.
2 • Webcam (by Jesse on 2022-07-11 02:04:43 GMT from Canada)
@1: "Why does Jesse call a v4l2loopback device "fake"?"
Because it's not real. There is no physical webcam. It's just software pretending a webcam exists. The opposite of real is fake. Sure, you could call it emulated, I suppose, but fake works just as well. Would you call a cubic zirconia an emulated diamond?
3 • Nix (by Charlie on 2022-07-11 03:18:57 GMT from Hong Kong)
Not sure what happened to Jesse, but my Nix OS experience of upgrading from 21.04 to 22.05 is extremely smooth, and the system and package manager is smooth and normal as it's in the past.
Maybe it's the problem of the graphical livecd? It looks like the LiveCD copies files from the live system instead of making a new system as what we are doing with text mode install.
Btw the whole concept of Nix is really cool and fast, with one file to edit (in text mode) then the whole system finishes its install, and two lines of command the system finishes upgrade. It's a bit tricky since it does not use the traditional file system layout, but for installation and upgrade it truly saves a lot of time
4 • fake vs genuine (parody) (by manda on 2022-07-11 03:46:15 GMT from New Zealand)
emulated diamond - a great marketing term! :)
Cubic zirconia is also known as "sensible" as opposed to the De Beers diamond hype, which turns out to be the genuine fake.
5 • nixos (by john on 2022-07-11 08:07:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Perhaps another choice of "do not use but would like to"
As sometimes we do not have the knowledge to use.
6 • nixos (by qwerty99 on 2022-07-11 12:53:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
@5 Another good option/choice would be OMDB (Over my dead body). nixos seems to be another case of poor quality reaching through into production; not really clear why Distrowatch wastes all of our time on this.
7 • Review (by dragonmouth on 2022-07-11 13:03:39 GMT from United States)
IOW, Nix OS is not ready for prime time.
8 • Reliability of NixOS (by mkingsley on 2022-07-11 13:45:45 GMT from United States)
In my experience, NixOS has been one of the more reliable distros for some of the more specialized setups like GPU to VM passthrough, or OCI or docker swarms. One of the nice things of having the entire system setup from a configuration file (including containers!) is versioning and upgrades are made that much more simple.
While I would not advise NixOS to anyone looking to try linux for a basic desktop system, someone looking for a distro to run servers, or containers, or wanting the ability to try new software and immediately roll back the changes, NixOS would be my go-to reccomendation.
9 • debian release (by tomaso on 2022-07-11 15:04:01 GMT from United States)
Kudos to Debian for their new updated release. Great support for 5 years. Commitment. Products that are used by serious users and developers. For years. Seriously reliable products for servers and desktop. This is choice the way it should be done.
10 • @9 (by Joe on 2022-07-11 15:53:46 GMT from Ecuador)
@9 Well said, 100% agreed. Kudos to Debian for just staying the course and keeping the drama to a minimum. When we talk about the legendary stability of Debian I would say that above all else we're referring to its predictability and reliability for long-term planning, because we have a pretty good idea of what Debian will look like in 5 years from now (hint: More or less like it is today. ;-) And that's a good thing in my opinion).
11 • my trouble with nixos (by rustam on 2022-07-11 15:58:36 GMT from Moldova)
for me nix seemed too complicated,
I tried it on another distro(kubuntu), and got it to install some packages..
But had trouble uninstalling a package.
seems to me that nix installed all my packages into some folder(or generation - i dunno the term nix is using)
and because of that I couldn't uninstall the package without uninstalling all other packages i needed
so for me nix seemed very hard to use, if you need advanced knowledge for simple things.
I didn't read the docs, but I used usual unix staff like 'command --help' and 'man command'
and still didn't catch how to use nix correctly.
So for me nix was an over engineered monster.
I still didn't figure out how to install a package in such a way that it dependencies shouldn't be touched when you want to delete it.
12 • my trouble with nixos (by rustam on 2022-07-11 16:43:12 GMT from Moldova)
Also,
I couldn't install a proprietary package from nix proprietary packages repo,
I couldn't figure it out, why nix didn't see things from this repo, even if I added the repo the way docs says,
IMHO It is way more complicated than with RPMFusion for fedora & co, or packman for opensuse & co.
so nix may be a cool dutch university research project, which has a lot of features,
but it is clearly too complicated for gorillas like me who have exp in classic package managers (apt, pacman ^_^, zypper, xbps, apk) and who use only man & --help, and don't read "NIX documentation" and expect that package management on linux should be easy...
13 • Nixos (by Hans Strijards on 2022-07-11 17:58:20 GMT from Netherlands)
I run have Nixos happily for years on end, without trouble. Shows how different experiences can be. It is one of the most stable installs compared to other distros. I use it for desktop purposes. It is one of the few distro's I can install on my particular laptop (hp compaq 6710b) without hassle. I use the iso without desktop environment, though, and edit the configuration.nix. I think calamares deserves some time to mature on Nixos. Jesse's review will help. There is no reason tot trash Nixos all at once.
14 • nixos (by dave on 2022-07-11 18:20:09 GMT from United States)
hard requirement for systemd? no thanks
15 • NixOS (by Terryn Serge on 2022-07-11 19:31:01 GMT from Belgium)
I downloaded the virtualbox kde image.
It's running perfect and very smooth. (8192GB ram, 4 cores)
The icon that don't work on the panel : nix-env -i discover and it will work.
It's a nice system :)
16 • Wanna try (by Arve on 2022-07-12 03:37:15 GMT from Sweden)
As a good nerd, I'd like to try using Nix, but I'm having a pretty big struggle trying to install it (Mint 20)... Meh, deb/apt-get does work as well as I need it to.
17 • NixOS, @15 NixOS VM (by Justme on 2022-07-12 04:35:07 GMT from United States)
I also tried the VM, and as you point out, installing Discover enables the icon, but that's it. Discover is useless since it's calling and not finding packagekit and associated services.
I'm always willing to invest time and effort in learning, but there must be a benefit. I've grown fond of apt over the years, and can usually fix problems with little effort. I don't see any improvement in Nix to warrant the learning curve.
18 • It's still fake to me (by CS on 2022-07-12 14:54:53 GMT from United States)
Fun Q+A this week.
According to another guide I looked up "Create Fake Webcam Streams" the -re switch causes the video to be read at native framerate which might make it play to the fake webcam in real time. Fun thing to try some day.
19 • Keep 32-bit Computers Running (by Roy on 2022-07-13 21:10:33 GMT from Canada)
Would Distrowatch please make a point of listing Linux distributions that still have a dedicated 32-bit OS in development so people can keep 32-bit computers running?
Thanking you in advance...
20 • 32-bit machines (by Jesse on 2022-07-13 21:15:14 GMT from Canada)
@19: We do provide easy access to a list of 32-bit distributions: https://distrowatch.com/search.php?architecture=i686#simple
21 • Please don't use nix-env (by hi there on 2022-07-13 21:42:33 GMT from Ukraine)
If you're using nix-env to install software, you're doing it wrong and there is no point in using nix package manager in this case. Just stick with apt/yum/pacman/whatever instead.
What nix is actually good at is _declarative_ package management and system configuration.
For nix on non-NixOS or macOS it's best to use https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/ to install and configure your packages. You write desired packages and configuration in your `home.nix` and run `home-manager switch` to apply your changes. That's it. You can copy your `home.nix` to another machine, run `home-manager switch` and get the same configured software. Mind blowing!
For NixOS it's even easier! You already have pre-generated `configuration.nix`. If you want your package to be in PATH, you add it to `environment.systemPackages`, run `nixos-rebuild switch` and boom, it's installed! You remove package from the list, run `nixos-rebuild switch` and it's gone, like it was never there.
You want to configure nginx with letsencrypt certificate? Easy! Add this to your `configuration.nix` and run `nixos-rebuild switch`:
```nix
{
services.nginx.enable = true;
services.nginx.virtualHosts."myhost.org" = {
addSSL = true;
enableACME = true;
root = "/var/www/myhost.org";
};
}
```
That's it! Your website is up and running with self-updating SSL certificate!
Here are some learning resources that I can recommend:
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/half-a-presentation-i-had-in-my-company-about-nixos/16467 (video link in the first post)
https://linktr.ee/nixos
https://github.com/mikeroyal/NixOS-Guide
22 • NixOS (by Qwert on 2022-07-14 17:05:14 GMT from United States)
How much research do I need to do to find out how install nix's grub to a dos extended partition.. Install error outs on grub install to /dev/sda1.
Thanks for any help you can provide...
23 • @21 (by Justin on 2022-07-14 18:17:22 GMT from United States)
Thanks for your comment. I want to try this with a Raspberry Pi. NixOS has some ARM support, and this might be easier than doing things like buildroot and TC for appliance applications or stripping down "lite" images for other distros.
Number of Comments: 23
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| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
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| • Issue 1026 (2023-07-03): Kumander Linux 1.0, Red Hat changing its approach to sharing source code, TrueNAS offers SMB Multichannel, Zorin OS introduces upgrade utility |
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| • Issue 1017 (2023-05-01): Xubuntu 23.04, Debian elects Project Leaders and updates media, systemd to speed up restarts, Guix System offering ground-up source builds, where package managers install files |
| • Issue 1016 (2023-04-24): Qubes OS 4.1.2, tracking bandwidth usage, Solus resuming development, FreeBSD publishes status report, KaOS offers preview of Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Issue 993 (2022-11-07): Static Linux, working with just a kernel, Mint streamlines Flatpak management, updates coming to elementary OS |
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KnoSciences
KnoSciences was a Knoppix-based bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. It was designed for use in educational institutions.
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