 Well, yeah So I just finished my long-term review of Debian less last week and I was looking for what to do next for my next long-term review and There was really only one answer and that is Nick's OS. I have been putting this off for a very long time and Really not because I have something against Nick's OS itself, but because their community is Kind of pushy. I'm just gonna put that out there. They're kind of pushy and that's really kind of being nice about it. I have heard Multitudes of people like Hundreds of people probably telling me that I should use Nick's OS or I should try Nick's OS or why haven't you tried Nick's OS or Any of these things that you saw in the comments there at the beginning I've heard that for a couple years now at this point and the more people Asked me to try new Nick's OS the less interested. I wasn't trying it just simply because I was being a petty, you know guy I guess and you know, I just I Lost interest in it because it was so popular. I don't know if that makes sense or not but anyways That the time for me being petty has to be over and Nick's OS is the thing that's going to be next now The plan here is this just like it was with Debbie and I'm going to install it as my main daily driver on my laptop which I use every single day and I'll install it on the secondary hard drive of the computer that says in front of me the one that I record on and I'll use it there Less than what I use it on the laptop because open Suze is the main distro here But and that's the way that's going to stay but I'll be using Nick's OS every single day And I don't know how long the long term review will take the Debbie and one lasted for five months I don't know if I'll go as long on Nick's West or maybe I'll go longer I have no plans as to how long I'll be there right now Other than I'm going to give it a fair shake I'm going to install it on hardware like I just said and I'm going to learn as much about it as Possible and see how well it works as a daily driver on a machine that I use every day and as a secondary distro as well, so That's the plan as of right now, but I do have as of right now Nick's OS actually installed in a VM now it like I said, this is just a VM So what we'll take everything I say with a grain of salt coming up forward But I wanted to install it in a VM and Actually play around with it to kind of get an idea of what I was getting myself into because I've never actually used Nick's OS For very long in the past. It was a couple hours Previously, I don't think that I ever even got into the configuration file at all I was just installing it with whatever the package manager is. So it's this one here I guess if as you're seeing it on the screen Nick's dash and I Messed around with that for a couple hours and that was my extent of my experience with Nick's OS in the past So I literally know nothing other than that There's a crap load of people out there who really like Nick's OS and they all want me to try it really really bad So here I am Trying it so what I wanted to do today other than letting you guys know that my next long-term review is Nick's OS is to give you guys some Very early very very early initial impressions here now all these impressions come from This virtual machine and just me messing around with it for a couple hours So take that as you will and know that none of these views are final. I'm not going to be held to them At the end of the long-term review I may or may not change my mind any of that stuff all this stuff is just for me and my initial impressions of installing it and Messing around with it for a couple hours the first Impression that I have that I need to say is that the installation is pretty slow now I don't know why that is and or I don't know if that's just because it's a virtual machine or There'll be the same experience. I have when I install it on hardware. I don't know yet. We'll see but the Install into this virtual machine took around 25 to 30 minutes, which is quite long for For a Linux install even on a virtual machine So that was that was one thing that I noticed another thing that I have to say is that the documentation is It's not great. It's not the worst documentation that I've ever seen but it's there it seems to be Fairly technical, so I'm wondering if a dumbass like me is actually going to be able to understand half of this stuff We'll see I haven't done a deep dive yet So it's possible that it's more user friendly than what it initially appeared, but we'll see how that goes It's one of the things that I'm mostly worried about is that there's a lot of things that you have to know in order to Actually use NixOS and if they don't explain it well in the documentation I'm worried that I won't be able to follow through with all the stuff that I need to in order to do the review So that's one thing that I'm worried about and from the brief glimpses into the documentation I've had so far it seems a little bit above my head But again, I've been skipping around trying to figure out how to install a few applications and stuff like that and I really haven't messed around any with the the actual Configuration file which looks like this. I've just kind of taken a glance at it I still need to learn what this is how it works what I need to do in order to You know rebase and do all the stuff that I need to do in order to create new images and all that stuff So obviously if you you're a NixOS user, you're probably hearing me use some terms that aren't necessarily Applicable towards NixOS. I don't know what I'm talking about yet. So forgive me there So in terms of the thing I'm worried about most right now is the documentation because I haven't Haven't seen it be all that great as of yet So that's the next thing the third thing that I'm kind of I still have in my brain And this was a preconception that I've had and it's still kind of with with me I'm not exactly sure that I'm interested in using a distribution that is 100% maintained or at least mostly maintained Via configuration file now. I understand the benefits of it. So don't get me wrong there I think that it's cool to be able to take this configuration file and put it on my laptop or put it on my secondary hard drive And it's just going to install all the stuff that I need to install that sounds really awesome Not sure if I'm interested in actually maintaining Linux that way And it seems weird to me right and it probably seems weird to you because Matt you're a window manager user You love configuration files. You do all of your configuration for Qtile and BSPWM and DWM and all these window managers that you use all that stuff is done in a configuration file Why does this turn you away so much and the answer to that question is I don't really know But it doesn't feel like the way that I want to maintain Linux I think mostly because most of this stuff in a traditional Distribution is done just with a package manager, right now obviously Doing it with a configuration file You get added benefits and also every package manager also has a configuration file But it doesn't it's not it doesn't control the packages themselves just the package manager this here controls the actual System and that's a different paradigm than a traditional package manager So it's something that I'm still wrapping my head around and I'm not sure if I'm gonna like it I feel like I'm not gonna like it as of right now I'm going into this with a very negative attitude and I probably shouldn't I try I'm gonna try to Flush that out of my system and open my mind just a little bit to see if I can Actually get my head around this and if I can like it, you know as I use it We'll see I'm not sure though that it's going to be a success as of right now. I'm still very pessimistic about the whole outcome of this When it comes to managing the configuration file, it's okay So I'm not sure where I'm going with that yet We'll see it's another thing that I kind of have in the back of my brain How am I going to deal with this? Is it going to be good? Are the benefits something that are actually going to be Beneficial towards me or just towards other people. So one of my initial Compliance against all immutable distros was that the benefits you don't really apply to most people right the reproducibility of an immutable distro and the Idea behind being able to just kind of push them out into many machines Don't really apply to most people because most people only have one machine, right? Now a lot of us are Linux nerds. We have many different thinkpads in our repertoire in our Armory, I guess, you know, we have thinkpads the galore. So maybe we're a little bit different I suppose but for most normal people the mutable aspect of things and obviously there's more to immutability than just the Reproducible aspect of them But that's one of the key features that a lot of people point towards and it doesn't really apply to a lot of people So with Nick's OS I'm kind of and that's especially true with Nick's OS one of the things that they highly advertise is the ability to reproduce Everything when it comes to Nick's OS whether it's the whole system or certain environments for development all this stuff is supposed to be reproducible down to the exact bits and I'm not sure that that benefit is something that I Really need I'm not sure yet. Maybe I'll find a use case for it Maybe being able to transfer a configuration file from one Nick's OS installed to another will be beneficial I'm not sure yet, but that's one of the things that I'm definitely going to have to look at and kind of figure it out because one of the things that I want to answer in this long-term review is Does Nick's OS make sense for normal people and when I say normal people? I'm not saying necessarily like, you know, mom dad and grandpa what I'm talking about is like normal Linux users people who just use Linux to Basically do their normal computing activities. They're not developers. They're not uber Linux nerds They don't do a lot of tinkering stuff. Okay, does Nick's OS make sense for that type of person or Is it more like a gentoo or a Linux from scratch? Which isn't really ever been for normal person It's more for a Linux nerd someone who's really interested in tinkering Someone who's really interested in getting into the deep dive of their system so that they can do basically whatever they want so I'm that's one of the questions that I really want to answer and The thing is in my biggest issue here going forward is going to be getting my preconceptions out of the way and keeping an open mind because I do have some very negative thoughts on where this review is going to go so I'm going to have to kind of get in my brain and Kind of root all that stuff out just so I can install it and just experience it as a normal person without those preconceptions Would and if I can do that then I'm more likely to come out of this with a better result than if I go into it negative and Then just experience everything in a negative kind of light and if that happens It's more likely the end results going to be me thinking that this is a bad distro and I don't want to taint the The review in that fashion so I'm gonna work on Getting in that open mind and try to find the benefits of Nick's West and really the question that must be answered At least for me personally is why do so many people like this thing so damn much What is it about Nick's West that has drawn such a crowd of Linux nerds to my comments sections to my discord? To my mastodon literally everywhere these people follow me around like stalkers telling me that I have to try Nick's West because it's awesome It's amazing. You got to use it. I need to figure out why those people like it so much that that's what I need to figure out That's my overarching question that I need to have answered during this review. Why do people like it so much? Why do what why have they become so? Not an ant not only enamored with this distribution, but they are very interested in telling everyone how awesome Nick's West is why has that happened because I don't know I haven't been it from what little I know of Nick's West I don't understand it and I Definitely want to know so those are the things that I'm going to be looking for my initial very early initial impressions and I think that's probably where I'll stop this now So over the course of the next few months, you'll probably expect to see a few Nick's West videos from me Then it won't like happen every week or anything like that probably once a month or so We'll see how that goes some I don't have anything truly planned yet But I will do a few very specific feature videos over the course of the next couple months or so Depending on how long this review actually lasts. I'm expecting it to be a Few months at least I'm not I'm not going to aim I don't think I'm going to be able to get the sense of Nick's West in just a single month Which is used to be my long-term review I'll push it out to at least two months and probably go further than that just like I did with Debbie and so We'll see how this goes. So Nick's West the next long-term review is in progress I'll be installing it on my hardware this evening and We'll see how all this goes so you can expect on my social media accounts of Macedon and in discord You'll probably expect me to be Talking about this quite a bit going forth. So That is what happens next now for those of you who are wondering that how does this? you know kind of mesh with your to your Linux challenge and Your open Sousa fanboyness well Open Sousa is going nowhere Open Sousa will be on the main hard drive of my main computer where I'll be using that The vast majority of the time that the laptop will be where I be Revealing Nick's OS and now I'll have Nick's OS on the secondary hard drive of this computer as well So I'll kind of be using them side-by-side, but open Sousa has my heart and It just continues to get better guys Open Sousa is fantastic and I guess I'm I'm I'm to open Sousa like the Nick's OS users are to their own distro They really like Nick's OS. I'm the open Sousa fanboy now You should use open Sousa Anyways, that's it for this video if you liked it give it a thumbs up I'd really appreciate it. 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You guys are all awesome and Without you the challenges for not being anywhere near where it is right now So thank you so very very much for your support. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time