How to backup their home directory, even if it is a basic method like mounting an external drive and drag and dropping files.

As someone currently deep into Nix (even contributed to nixpkgs), I’m currently in the process of migrating away and am planning on just running good old Debian stable with docker compose for my home server. I wouldn’t waste your time learning Nix, it isn’t a transferable skill and totally locks you into the ecosystem.

Arch on the desktop, Debian on the server is the way to go. Both solid, community (non-corporate) distros that fit each use case.

Yes, if anything it seems easier to handle on linux. Just bake golden images that already have a static list of required packages.

I’m a little surprised that they are planning on testing downstream distros like bazzite. It would make more sense to just stick to the biggest upstream distros like Arch/Debian/Fedora for benchmark purposes in my opinion.

Integrated brightness control for multiple monitors is awesome!

I’m curious how this goes for you. I run all my machines on NixOS except my k8s cluster which is Talos for now. I have been thinking of switching to Nix for that too.

I just set up wanderer and workout-tracker. Along with installing gadgetbridge on my phone, I now have a completely self hosted fitness/workout stack with routes, equipment tracking, heatmaps, general health metrics like HRV, heart rate, etc through my Garmin watch, without having Garmin Connect installed. Awesome!

Check out Lunanode. Cheapest option is 3.50 a month and bonus points for being Canadian. I just recently set my VPS up there and am really pleased with them. Afaik they support your needs including custom ISO.

Just use open source software?

What I do to keep DNS consistent inside and out is use Tailscale on all my clients. I host a DNS server hosted on my tailnet that is set up as split DNS for my “kickassdomain.org”.

Fwiw I switched from k3s to Talos and find it much easier to manage. I run 3 mini 1L PCs with rook-ceph and it works flawlessly even on 1Gbe.

As of the latest release (21), you can simply install microG on regular LOS and no longer need to install LineageOS for microG since it now includes the necessary signature spoofing support.

Invidious?

Ubuntu -> Arch -> Debian (stable) -> Fedora Silverblue -> NixOS

I’m curious, why do you use LVM with BTRFS and not just use BTRFS built in subvolumes?

btrfs snapshots are still useful on immutable distros to recover accidentally deleted data.

You will hate Ansible if you are coming from Nix. I went the other way and Nix is 1000x cleaner.

Being able to actually reverse changes is trivial in Nix, but can be a headache in Ansible. Not to mention the advantages of writing in an actual language and not yaml full of template hacks. I personally don’t see much future for tools like Ansible, there is considerable inertia working in its favor right now and it is absolutely true that it is widely used, but the future of configuration management is for sure more aligned with how Nix works.

Similar to my scheme:

laptop = “laptop”
nas = “nas”
router = “router”

Then if there are more than one in each category I use nas-0, nas-1, etc.

I have used all three! I started with Server then went to CoreOS running Kubernetes and settled on NixOS which I have been very happy with for about a year now. I run about 25-30 services all using built in modules.

Regarding security, if you are using well crafted modules on NixOS, there should be good systemd hardening in place. That being said there is no reason you can’t just use containers on NixOS.

I also find deploying NixOS far superior to butane/ignition used by CoreOS/Fedora. I use nixos-anywhere and can deploy my entire server in a few minutes without manual intervention.