[03:33] <Mooncairn> Today's problem is installing nix under Debian. The install script leaves things in a broken state.
[03:34] <Mooncairn> The version of nix in Debian proper is ancient and to get a Debianized recent version of nix, I'd have to upgrade to testing or sid and risk breaking everything else.
[03:35] <Mooncairn> Someone remind why I once thought computers were really cool? :-/
[03:36] <Mooncairn> I need to take up a non-tech hobby, like knitting.
[03:44] <cmaloney> Looms are computers
[03:44]  * Mooncairn groans
[03:44] <Mooncairn> Basket weaving, maybe?
[03:45] <cmaloney> algorithms
[16:04] <Scary_Guy> IRC client issues?
[16:05] <Mooncairn> No. Just diagnosing other problems via relogin and reboot.
[16:05] <Scary_Guy> What's it doing or not doing?
[16:06] <Mooncairn> Sometimes login and logout is slow (over one or two minutes).
[16:07] <Mooncairn> I was trying to see if it's consistent. It is not.
[16:08] <Mooncairn> A couple of times system shutdown took over two minutes with a lot of disk activity during that time.
[16:08] <Mooncairn> Not sure what's wrong. Again thinking hardware issues and not happy about the thought.
[16:09] <Scary_Guy> How old is it?  Yeah I wouldn't complain too much about a long boot.  I remember trying to run Windows 95 on a 486 and walking away for half an hour.
[16:10] <Scary_Guy> Kids today, everything has to be right now, no one has any patients anymore.
[16:10] <Scary_Guy> :P
[16:10] <Mooncairn> Oh, those were the good ol' days, weren't they? ;)
[16:11] <Mooncairn> The other thing I'm trying to figure out is how I want to handle installing apps and managing dotfiles.
[16:11] <Scary_Guy> Most dotfiles just get thrown into /home/$user/
[16:12] <Scary_Guy> As far as apps, they exist on the SSD, and the larger ones go on the larger SSD (like my Steam library.)
[16:12] <Mooncairn> Oh, of course. That's not what I meant. I'm trying to figure out a process of storing dotfiles in .git and installing them on a fresh install so that I don't have to keep doing the "spend weeks getting everything back up" phase.
[16:13] <Mooncairn> Same thing with packages. I want a script that I can run on a fresh install and automatically set everything up.
[16:13] <Scary_Guy> That's not a bad idea.  My problem is some of those may have sensitive crap on them.
[16:13] <Mooncairn> That's why I was toying with nix yesterday.
[16:14] <Scary_Guy> Nix seems great
[16:14] <Mooncairn> I like the idea of it.
[16:14] <Mooncairn> The only thing is that a lot of stuff can be downloaded for a single simple package.
[16:15] <Mooncairn> For example, I installed a dinky little program last night and it downloaded hundreds of gigs of files (including gcc 12.3 when I already had gcc installed in Debian).
[16:16] <Scary_Guy> Yikes.  I'll stick to .appimage
[16:16] <Mooncairn> I'm thinking the best use case for nix is probably if you're running NixOS or if you just have the barest install of a base OS (like Debian) and then use nix for absolutely everything else.
[16:17] <Mooncairn> Yes, there's that, too.
[16:18] <Mooncairn> If I wrote an install script instead, I could then curl an .appimage and install/update it (along with everything else) automatically.
[16:18] <Mooncairn> I'm leaning toward that for now.
[16:18] <Mooncairn> Maybe save serious use of nix for if the script idea proves unworkable.
[16:19] <Mooncairn> whoops, back a few messages, s/gigs/megs/
[16:20] <Scary_Guy> I have a really dumb idea, make your own PPA?  Then list every package you want as a dependency.
[16:20] <Scary_Guy> Well, maybe not a PPA since I don't know if vanilla Debian can do those again yet.
[16:21] <Mooncairn> No idea.
[16:21] <Mooncairn> Probably not would be my guess.
[16:22] <Mooncairn> In any case, I don't really want to make debian packages of things. That's a lot of work.
[16:22] <Mooncairn> I was willing to do it back in the day, but these days I'd rather spend my time on other things.
[16:23] <Scary_Guy> https://news.itsfoss.com/ubuntu-23-10-ppa/
[16:24] <Scary_Guy> Fair enough, but I was thinking just a metapackage so it wouldn't have anything actually in it, just references to dependencies.
[16:27] <Mooncairn> Would there be a mechanism for downloading and installing non-deb packages through that?
[16:31] <Mooncairn> Ok, looks like Debian does have add-apt-repository and can use PPAs, but it's the insecure version.
[17:32] <jrwren> slow login/logout. I'd check DNS first thing.
[22:11] <Scary_Guy> Yes, because network settings are the first thing to come to mind when thinking about login issues.  :P
[22:11] <Scary_Guy> I'm not doubting you, just saying it's stupid unless it's literally a terminal or something.
[22:27] <jrwren> you must know what happens upon login and logout and that when it happens things are LOGGED including hostname which may be resolved. That calls a resolver. Hence: it is always DNS.
[22:28] <jrwren> modern linux distro's default PAM profiles are so absurdly complex, I'm amazed that they work at all most of the time ;) 
[22:31] <Scary_Guy> Yeah, that's why I wasn't doubting.
[22:31] <Scary_Guy> It's just still dumb for anything local.
[22:33] <Scary_Guy> Especially if it's an air-gapped system.
[22:35] <Scary_Guy> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_8 lol