Being a beginner to Nix myself, I want to join in saying that as of now, the wiki *is hugely helpful to me*. The manual(s) *do* have a lot of good stuff and I like them very much, that's for sure, but the wiki totally does too. And I can't really remember finding any advice there that would be dated, I mean that it wouldn't work for me.
Specific examples of what I seem to remember being useful to me recently (and I believe I came to all of those via Google): - https://nixos.org/wiki/Installing_NixOS_from_a_USB_stick (the notes about syslinux, I think; I'm not 100% sure if that was the wiki, but I remember I was helped by some advice on how to use syslinux); - https://nixos.org/wiki/Howto_find_a_package_in_NixOS (also the first time I read about nox; have to try it yet); - https://nixos.org/wiki/Network_Manager - this unfortunately I think I *did not* find when struggling with how to use NetworkManager on my first minimal install (answer: nmcli) -> that's also why I'm trying to contribute the PR with declarative config for NM; - https://nixos.org/wiki/Cheatsheet (by the way, this isn't even linked from the main wiki page I think). Thanks, /Mateusz Czapliński. On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 2:47 AM, Jonathan Glines <[email protected]> wrote: > 2016-01-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Profpatsch <[email protected]>: > > We have basically decided to shut it down soon (™), right? > > > > Just now I tried to set up my printer again. > > For that I first looked at docs and the source, which didn’t > > provide any helpful info, and then I found the article on generating > > the correct Cups files here: https://nixos.org/wiki/Printers > > > > If we dissolved the wiki, we would need to tranfer all that knowledge. > > But should we all pack it into nixos-help? > > This is the first time I've heard this; I missed the thread where they > decided to shut it down. > > It's somehow difficult to defend the wiki. It has a lot of dated > information, some misinformation, and not enough editors. But the > wiki's articles are mostly orthogonal to the official documentation. > There's no way we can replace the wiki with official documentation. > Here's what I mean: > > 1. When I started using NixOS, the manual mostly confused me. I > Googled for "example nixos configurations" and wound up on the "Real > World NixOS Dotfiles" on the wiki. That's a page that would never fit > in the official NixOS documentation. A year later, someone (not me I > swear) added my nixrc to that wiki page, and now I have over a dozen > stars on my GitHub repository. Wow. Those people are crazy for > thinking I know how to write configuration files, but I'm sure the > examples on that wiki page help to inspire them like they did me. > > 2. The "Raspberry PI" article does not belong in the NixOS > documentation until /after/ the Raspi build is working. But if nobody > documents the progress, how will curious people experiment with it and > get Raspi working? Scrape the mailing list? Scroll through the feature > request on GitHub? Unlikely. It's a catch 22 problem without a wiki. > > 3. Random people documenting how they set up their laptop's weird > hardware. Sure, some people have blogs. But not all of us have the > time to maintain a blog. A wiki is a good place for those people to > contribute. > > 4. Does anyone remember when Gentoo's wiki crashed, and the fallout > effect it had on that community? I know our wiki is much smaller and > probably not that significant, but if the NixOS userbase does grow, > where will those users turn to? (Probably the Arch Wiki TBH) > > Incidentally, I contributed to the printer article you mentioned. I > still don't know (after a year of using NixOS) how one would go about > contributing to the official documentation. I feel it would be a shame > for future NixOS users to lose that easy means to contribute. If new > users are reluctant to contribute to the wiki, why should we expect > them to contribute to the official documentation? > > The maintainers of the wiki are making a huge mistake trying to shut > it down. The wiki as it is now is a tiny seed that reflects how small > the NixOS community is right now. We should help it grow, probably by > pruning the ugly bits (even linking them to the official docs). Please > don't kill it. > > I'm really sorry for the rant... > _______________________________________________ > nix-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev >
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