Void Linux ruination • 10mo ago • 100%

XMonad + XMobar?

How do you go about setting up XMonad with XMobar on Void? Installing it via XBPS results in errors about not being able to find the module 'XMonad', and using Cabal fixes that, but leads to XMobar not being able to find my font and uses a pixelated font instead.

Emacs ruination • 11mo ago • 100%

Beancount in Org-mode

I've been thinking of moving my personal bookkeeping to Emacs, and I found out about Beancount, which seems perfect for me. I was wondering, though, if I could (and should) use it with Org-mode and noweb like the ledger tutorial in Worg. If so, what does such a workflow look like? Can I also use capture templates to quickly record transactions?

I've seen people use nix-doom-emacs, have it set up standalone, and some have fancy Nix code that's way beyond my understanding for now to set it up. Which one is the recommended way to set it up? Also, how do you get completions in nix-mode?

I've been hopping around Gentoo and Void the past few days with musl on both, and I'll be going back to NixOS in a bit due to not having enough time to set up either of them. I've realised how little RAM either systems use on musl, though, and I was wondering if there is any chance of replacing glibc with musl on NixOS?

Gentoo Linux ruination • 1y ago • 100%

Gentoo vs. NixOS for a simple desktop system

Posted something similar on the NixOS sublemmy, but it basically boils down to the fact that I tend to switch back and forth between both distros, and I enjoy both very much as both Gentoo and NixOS provide an immense degree of control over my system and allow me to go wild and do whatever I want. But I feel the need to settle on one system and tinker with the other on a VM instead, as this switching back and forth is becoming a time sink and hindering my studies somewhat. The question is, which to use as the main desktop system? Gentoo feels more intuitive to me, but NixOS is definitely powerful at managing complex systems, but then again, I only have a simple desktop system. Another thing that I thought of is that maybe I can somewhat replicate NixOS' rollback feature, which is my absolute favourite feature of it, using a combination of Git and ZFS snapshots? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

This is more of a personal dilemma, since I keep finding myself switching back and forth between NixOS and Gentoo every now and then. I've done this twice for each so far ever since I immediately started off my Linux journey with Gentoo, making a quick stop at Arch once when I didn't have enough time to set either of them up properly. Both of them provides a massive amount of control over my system and lets me build my system in weird and interesting ways, e.g. musl, clang, and/or SELinux for Gentoo and impermanence for NixOS (it still kind of blows my mind right now). Personally, I find Gentoo more intuitive, but NixOS is more powerful for managing complex systems, but then again, I don't have any complex systems to manage, only a singular desktop system. I'd love to keep switching back and forth, but I feel like it has become sort of a time sink for me, somewhat hindering my studies, and thus I feel the need to decide which one to settle on, and which one to keep in a VM to mess around with. That brings me to the title of the post, which do you think is better for a simple desktop system? Also, I don't know how viable dual booting is, given that I manage my dotfiles almost entirely with home-manager, and I like to have secure boot.

I was looking at ryan4yin's new NixOS book and stumbled upon [nixpak](https://github.com/nixpak/nixpak), a neat project that , as far as I understand, acts like a sandbox for Nix packages, similar to Flatpak. I've been wanting to try using it for myself, but haven't found any dotfiles I could ~~steal from~~ use as a references. If anyone uses this, I'd love to hear how, and what your experiences are with it.

Gentoo Linux ruination • 1y ago • 100%

What exactly do the different types of stage3 archive do?

I've heard that you should be using the appropriate stage3 archive for the profile you want to use, but what exactly are the differences between them? I'm asking this because I want to try doing a Hardened/SELinux/Musl/LLVM install, and there's a profile for that, but not the stage3 archive. I was thinking of starting with either Hardened/Musl or LLVM/Musl. Any thoughts on that?

I don't quite understand how to set up AppArmor on NixOS, and I can't seem to find anyone's dotfiles which has AppArmor configurations. Is AppArmor support not a thing on NixOS, or is it just configured the regular way and not declaratively?

I've seen a lot more people start to use Lanzaboote for secure boot recently, and I want to try it myself. However, I have a ZFS fiesystem, and I've heard that you can't do secure boot on ZFS, and the ZFS wiki itself says that you need to disable secure boot or the ZFS kernel module won't load. I'm planning on moving my root to tmpfs for impermanence tomorrow anyways, but my home will still be on ZFS. I'm not too knowledgeable in these areas, but I can't see why I can't just sign the ZFS kernel module. Anyone has secure boot on ZFS? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

Linux ruination • 1y ago • 100%

RSS feed readers?

What RSS feed readers do you use? I've been trying out several of them, namely Newsflash, GNOME Feeds, and Newsboat. All of these fits my use case, but each with their own minor but unique issues. Newsflash has the best feature set of them from what I've seen, but it doesn't seem to follow my GTK theme, and I don't really know why (kind of new to Linux).GNOME Feeds do follow the GTK theme except for the reader panel itself which retains its own colour theme for some reason. Newsboat is otherwise perfect but doesn't seem to support images, which I guess is to be expected from a command-line program. I'm sticking with Newsboat for now, but I'm looking for suggestions for what else I could try.

I've been reading some articles regarding impermanence in NixOS, particularly [this](https://xeiaso.net/blog/paranoid-nixos-2021-07-18), [this](https://guekka.github.io/nixos-server-1/), [this](https://grahamc.com/blog/erase-your-darlings/), and [this](https://elis.nu/blog/2020/05/nixos-tmpfs-as-root/), and I want to set up impermanence on my desktop system. Since it involves deleting my entire root, however, I figured I'd ask for advice here to learn what the best practices are for doing this to minimise risk of data loss, though it isn't too critical since it's a new setup. For reference, I have a Flake + home-manager setup on ZFS root, though I didn't think to do a snapshot when the disk was empty since I didn't know about impermanence when I started out. I also have separate ZFS datasets for /, /home, /nix, /var, and /var/lib. I want to set up impermanence for both root and home, with some persistent directories on home, but I'm not sure if I should set it up on both at once or if I should do root first and then home. Any advice or help is appreciated!

PKM Personal Knowledge Management ruination • 1y ago • 100%

Org-mode

Anyone here uses Org-mode for PKM? I'm planning on moving to it from Obsidian, primarily due to Org-babel and the fact that it's open source, and would like to know what your setups and workflows are like with it (plus points if you're a student because I am too)