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Comment by kick | Hacker News Reader

I really dislike Nix/NixOS, but I think it's kind of unreasonable to claim something is unappealing because of a learning curve. Pretty much everything on the planet has a learning curve; if a project is genuinely innovative or aiming for a paradigm shift, and you find the benefits of it worthwhile, there's probably always going to be a learning curve.

That said, are we really reading the same post? What's presented here is...really simple, and you should be pretty much familiar with most of it if you actually set up Gentoo and Arch in the past; pretty much everything directly translates that requires user interaction in this, and the package format is pretty similar to write & read, too.

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> it's kind of unreasonable to claim something is unappealing because of a learning curve.

It's not unreasonable at all. It all depends who is claiming that. Consider Mac OS and compare it to any Linux in terms of the learning curve. Can my mother say that Linux is unappealing because it's to hard to learn it? Of course.

Even among engineers there are people to prefer just getting the stuff done without spending hours or weeks on configuring their environment (even if it could pay off).

Like game developers, graphical developers, app developers, actually anyone selling desktop and mobile OS software.

The domain still waiting for Desktop Linux to happen.

The appealing features of whatever it is are still appealing despite the learning curve. To highlight what I object to, because I feel I may have come across ambiguously:

Not much about all this setup feels appealing.

The good features about, say, OS X, are not made less appealing because of the rest of OS X. They're still appealing properties.

I think you're missing a variable: point of view. Give positive points to any feature you find appealing. Give negative points to any feature you find unappealing.

If you have the person you're speaking to go through the same process, you might find you've assigned points differently. And the net sum might be closer to zero for them. That's what makes going through the entire process unappealing for them.

I'm not missing that variable; the comment you're replying to was explicitly written to try and clear up that I was not missing that variable.

> I really dislike Nix/NixOS

I'm honestly curious why you dislike it

In order from most to least, all concerns but some that I'm usually happy overlooking:

* Poorly-implemented versions of theoretically-interesting ideas

* Poor implementations, technically

* Lacking merit compared to its best competitor (insofar as free software has competitors)

* Lacking merit compared to its main competitor

* Deep philosophical and moral disagreements

* Toxic and obnoxious community

This isn't to say it's bad, of course. It's just something I dislike; I seek no wider war.

That doesn't really answer much, can you be more specific?

Why is it poorly implemented, what are the problems?

Who is the competitor, and why is it better? (Guix?)

What are the philosophical issues?

How is the community toxic and obnoxius?

Personally there are a few things that annoy me about Nix, mostly implementation and documentation wise. Also, the language is pretty odd and the CLI UX is somewhat messy.

But the community (IRC / Discourse) has been pretty helpful for me thus far.

I'd prefer not to be more specific, actually; at least on most points. Complaining about popular new things in threads about them is a trend I find irritating, and using a thread about how someone finds something cool to give reasoning as to why it's distasteful is completely off-topic and kind of rude, anyhow.

However, I will note that I listed two competitors, not one, and while I think both have more merit, I only think the best is worth using out of all three. I'll point out that it's not Guix, and that it's older than Nix, but I don't think advertising alternatives is a particularly nice thing to do in a thread about any given piece of free software.

Fair enough, although I don't see how mentioning the names of competitors and giving well-reasoned comparison is somehow worse than calling a project "poorly implemented", "lacking merit", and having a "toxic and obnoxious community" without providing any verifiable arguments.

All three of those can be easily written off by anyone who likes the project. Claim that 4chan is toxic; people who like 4chan will think you're an idiot, but it won't really ruin their mood. Point out specific examples of their favorite board criticizing something they love, however, and they probably will feel upset for one reason or another.

But in a public forum such as this, calling a community toxic can, and will, keep people from looking in to to the associated project any further. If you have specifics, you should say them - public spaces are the right place to out toxic communities. But, people on the internet throwing around words like "toxic" without substantiation can be really damaging to communities by preventing growth.

Please substantiate - I'm not involved in the Nix community much but whenever I've been in the #nixos IRC channel, they've been super helpful.

>Complaining about popular new things in threads about them is a trend I find irritating

It's a little too late for that. Complaining in a vague way across several comments and then not elaborating further is, I think, definitely more rude than making some concrete complaint (like the original comment's complaint about learning something new)

I didn't complain, and I didn't even criticize it in "several" comments; the only comment with anything resembling criticism is the second one I wrote, and it's just a single comment!

I said I didn't like something as a way of making it clear that I'm not trying to brigade for Nix and don't really have any incentive to defend it, and I gave an argument on why I believe the initial comment was being unfairly negative to Nix.

I was then asked why I disliked Nix. I made no complaints, I just listed my opinions. When I was asked to go into actual complaints implying fact rather than personal opinions, I said I'd prefer not to.

In my opinion, you probably don't have good reasons.

> I don't think advertising alternatives is a particularly nice thing to do in a thread about any given piece of free software

I don't think throwing unsubstantiated claims around is a particularly nice thing to do. I don't mind you having these opinions. But if you're not ready to properly argue them, it's probably better to just abstain from the discussion entirely. That's how I handle my own opinions as well.

I was asked why I dislike something. I answered. "Unsubstantiated" is a really weird thing to use in the context of opinion. An unsubstantiated claim exclusively applies to fact, while I was very clearly giving my opinion. None of the things listed can be objectively measured.

I'd be perfectly happy to argue for them, but I don't think this is the right place to do it. Frankly, I don't care about how you handle your own opinions. When I am asked about my own, I'll tell them. I won't try and sell them as factual to anyone else, though, which is what going into more detail would require me doing in this particular instance.

What's the third competitor? There is no reason to be so evasive in a technical discussion.

It wouldn't be a technical discussion any more than a Solaris vs. Linux flamewar is a technical discussion, in my opinion.

Could you at least, at some point, when the comments have died down, share what this third alternative is? I'm really very curious - everyone replying to you is.

- It can't be GoboLinux, because that post-dates Nix (by a small amount)

- I've never heard anyone suggest environment modules have more technical merit than Nix, though they do predate Nix

- Could it be portage, which has some of the same features as Nix? Nix explicitly cited portage as a predecessor, and IMO it surpasses it, so that would be surprising...

I really don't know anything other than Nix or Guix that follows Nix's philosophy. I'm really interested to know what you're referring to!

You're being unnecessarily cryptic.

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