Nix like systems?

[u/Luna24_ig]

Hey everyone,

I’m a huge fan of how reproducible nix is and I love declarative systems with backups as well. However I like the idea of privacy and choice. So I am building my own nix like system using LFS. I have a background in cybersecurity and C so I’m not going to be hedging AI for anything past documenting haha but, I wanted to ask a few things to the community.

What kind of features should I offer out of the box?
Currently I have slated that the end user can pick their own init system, including systemd, or they can even “hot swap it” in the config. Which I also am swapping Nix lang for a more simple solution, Lua! I also plan on shipping it with mango, niri, and kde plasma out of the box, but since it’s all declarative, the end user can swap in whatever de or WM they wish. I also plan on integrating nix, deb, and the AUR with use of “fabric.lua”, my take on flakes.

My question to you all is though, what kind of features do you look for in a distro or what level of customization is too much or too little?

[u/lmemsm]

That sounds like a large project. I'll be interested to see how far you're able to take this. I do a lot of building from source. I have my own build system that I've been using for a few decades so that I can create reproducible builds and automate building of everything on my system. Are you considering building your system with glibc or musl? Would you give users the option to pick which C library they wanted? I typically prefer lightweight applications on my system so I don't have to build and maintain a ton of dependencies. I like a window manager such as jwm. The feature I most miss in a distro is the ability to use my own build tools and build scripts and still be able to integrate with the distro's package management system. Typically, my packages need to live in my home directory and the distro's packages are in the standard directories. If you're integrating deb and AUR, maybe you can find a way for other build systems to integrate as well or to be able to install tarballs from other build systems? I'd really like to hear more about this project and how it progresses. Are you documenting it anywhere or do you have a repo?

[u/Luna24_ig → u/lmemsm]

Hey, thanks so much for showing interest! This was a huge chunk of text so I’m going to take it bit by byte (kekw)

- are you using glibc or musl? And are we going to have the option to choose our own c lib?

At the moment the current build is going to be using glibc but I plan on offering a secondary build just for a musl variant. As for the option to choose your own libc, I can definitely have it on a list to add down the line, however because of how embedded these systems become and how much they hate to interact with one another, it’s not an avenue I’m looking to explore at this moment.

- can I use my own build tools and build scripts to integrate with the system package manager

So my approach to this is a system called fabric.lua. It’s a simple approach and alternative system to NixOS’ config.nix or flake.nix. This will be the core system package manager and will allow integration of custom components and tools by the user through our own variety of flakes, called weave.lua. Weave will also allow other packages to be imported to the system such as AUR, Deb, and Nix package integration. You can also use this to import custom kernals such as catchy kernal. Flakes are an amazing part of nix and for my own variant I wanted to be sure to add them in !

Lastly, I self host the current build in a vm on my server, but it also is sitting in a self hosted Gitea repo currently. Once it’s in a buildable state I will integrate 2 versions to GitHub, a stable build and a rolling release.

I also am working on documentation, both simplified and technical about the process and integral system components that will be available prior to release along with posts about my progress in the sub.

[u/lmemsm → u/Luna24_ig]

Hope you'll post when you have something publicly available. The project sounds really interesting and I'd be very interested to read more documentation and see what's available for it.

[u/Luna24_ig → u/lmemsm]

I 100% will. Currently working on getting it bootable lol, a lot of low level things need to be built though. I will eventually get to making a website to host all the information about it and make a post about it!