Fellow open-source enthusiasts,
We all have that mental backlog of promising projects — those distros, tools, and systems we keep tabs on but haven’t yet deployed. Perhaps you’re waiting for that mythical free weekend, lacking a spare/compatible device or just holding out until that one killer feature drops.
FWIW, my ‘someday’ list includes:
Operating Systems/Distros:
- Gentoo – Source-based meta-distribution driven by Portage and USE-flags for near-granular control; binary packages also available if you’d rather skip marathon compile sessions.
- Guix System – GNU’s functional, declarative distro built with Guile Scheme.
- MocaccinoOS – Image-based, container-built distro that originated from Gentoo/Sabayon but now uses the Luet package manager and OTA-like updates.
- NixOS – Declarative Linux distribution using the Nix package language.
- Qubes OS – Security-focused OS that uses Xen virtualization to compartmentalize your digital life into isolated environments with a unified desktop.
- Spectrum – In-development security-oriented OS built on Nixpkgs using KVM-based microVMs for compartmentalization.
Desktop Environments/Window Managers:
- COSMIC - System76’s comprehensive Wayland-native desktop environment written in Rust.
- Hyprland – Dynamic tiling Wayland compositor with scriptable layouts and impressive animations.
System Security/Firmware:
- coreboot – Open source alternative to proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware (though recent x86 still needs vendor blobs such as FSP/AGESA).
- Heads – coreboot + Linux payload providing TPM-measured, tamper-evident boot for select laptops.
- nix-mineral - NixOS module for convenient system hardening.
- TrenchBoot – Framework for dynamic root-of-trust (DRTM) launches via Intel TXT, AMD SKINIT, or SEV-ES.
Applications/Tools:
- Android Translation Layer - Run Android apps natively on Linux (still in early development).
- Emacs – The self-extensible Lisp machine masquerading as a text editor; someday I’ll embrace the config rabbit hole.
- Olive – FOSS non-linear video editor in alpha.
- systemd-sysext – Overlay read-only
/usrand/opt(or/etcvia confext) with extra images; extensions auto-activate at boot or can be merged/unmerged/refreshed live with a single command. Handy for immutable distros, though it’s additive-only and not a full package manager.
What open-source projects are you admiring from afar? Time to compare notes!
It’s been months since since “I’ll try NixOS next week for sure”… Any day now !
I really want to try Niri (infinite scroll wayland compositor), but since I’m very happy with Sway I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Also I’ve been bugging people to try LFS with me for a year… WAIT WHERE DID YOU GO ??? HELLO ???
Wow, Niri has been shaping up lovely since the last time I checked on it.
That reminds me; I should probably revisit Wayfire (and the other Wayland-WMs) as well 😅. Thank you for the reminder!
I also want to use Hyprland after seeing the pewdiepie video get talked about so much. Tried it out but it needs a lot of tweaking. So far I honestly don’t get why people like this over basic gnome. I can easily open any program and put it where I want in a second with the super key. I do want my system to look cooler though.
I run Hyprland, I love it but I find it very hard to recommend to other people.
Hyprland is basically unusable out of the box (by design). You don’t have wallpaper, notifications, system menu, task bar, lock screen, screen saver, idle lock, a launcher… You have to install, configure and style all these components by yourself.
Why do it, then?
- Tiling window, obviously. It takes a while to get used to it but I can no longer live without it
- Absolute control on how your entire system looks
- Feels lightweight, smooth and honestly very nice
- Documentation is great
Personally I wish they’d invest into a meta-package “Hyprland DE” where it’d install all the components with some sane defaults. It takes a lot of time to make your system look decent, especially if you have no sense of style like myself heh. I found it to be very worth it, but I haven’t personally met anyone willing to do all this work.
This is where I feel COSMIC will shine in the future. The tiled experience with sane defaults.
You have to be prepared to dive deep into configs and set a lot up yourself if you want to get into any tiling WM, but the payoff is crazy customization with nearly every shortcut designed by you to fit your needs. Its something you do if you want to be keyboard-centric. If you know how to touch type, it’d be well worth the time invested.
I went as far as making my own waybar in CSS on NixOS using home-manager. Crazy stuff, but its not too hard once you can understand what you’re looking at. Which honestly doesn’t take long at all. Bare minimum a couple weeks, really (unless you go NixOS and want to learn Nixlang and home-manager, then I’d say a month or so learning time).
My dream is to have entire operating system state stored as configuration, tracked by a git repo. To be able to know exactly what changed when, to revert back to whatever state I want and quickly copy setup from one device to another. So naturally NixOS caught my attention. I tried it before, once on Virtual Box VM and once on Raspberry Pi and I failed with installation of it on both of them, my weekend was too short :D It was a few years ago, it might get better now.
Same, declarative configs stored in a repo sound just perfect. But I haven’t gotten around to it yet…
It’s as easy to install as any other Linux distro now. Then you have to learn all the configurations of course…
If it fails again, try these two tricks:
- Install without swap and create a swap manually later.
- When the installer gets to creating the swap, which iirc is about 49%, spam swapoff in your terminal.
I installed last October and had to do this, so it could be fixed now. For some reason NixOS mounts the swap immediately after creating it, which bugs the install process.
Thanks, that might be helpful. Is this bug related to VirtualBox installation or Raspberry Pi?
Have you reported this bug somewhere? It might be a good idea to let nixos team know this problem occurs
It was an installation to two different PCs. I don’t think it has to do with NixOS rather than the installer software.
When I looked around on the web for solutions I found these tricks on a bug report, so at the time it had already been reported.
Huuh ! That’s somehow similar to how calamares treats LVMs. And also a hack/wacky workaround similar how to fix LVM installation
- mount every partition similar as chrooting
cdto each directory in a separated shell for each directory (keeps the mount points busy)- swapon the swap partition
Only then you are able to install your OS with calamares on a LVM filesystem hierarchy…Except this is a 5 years long issue/bug and they are discussing to drop LVM support :/.
Sorry for hijacking your comment with something unrelated to the actual post, I’m just amazed on how Linux fixes/workarounds can be odd at times.
As someone with a perpetual desire for clean system management—even back in my M$ days[1]—I deeply resonate with the desire to declare the desired state within a config file and treating it as the single source of truth; this is exactly why NixOS with the Impermanence module has captivated me ever since it appeared on my path, like a long-sought truth.
I’ve only abstained this long due to lacking a spare device for a proper test run that might lead to permanent adoption. Perhaps this summer will finally be the time to take the plunge.
Looking forward to bringing order to chaos at last.
Which I ‘dealt’ with by factory resetting every few months 😅 ↩︎
Heh, I worked in IT for many years, I remember the days of obsessive wipes of Windows machines to restore ghosted drive images because users couldn’t keep from installing malware or other bullshit on their system. One guy I had to wipe it every day for a fucking week straight to get the message across, and only then because he came whining to me about resetting his machine again and I got fed up and gave him what-for.
For now I use Mint + etckeeper + Timeshift as a form of backup, but I have never had a courage nor need to “try it” and actually restore state 😆
Until you confirm that you have a working backup, your backup is theoretical.
