As per title, I am mind-blown by the speed and stability of NixOS on this “relic” in IT terms… On this machine i tested:

Distro Performance
Fedora MEGA slow
Ubuntu OKish
LDME Fast
Debian Fast
NixOS VERY Fast

And the best thing is that I can bring this config with me on any computer! Oh boy, I think i have fallen in love with NixOS

  • Zachariah@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Did you leave a MacOS partition for firmware upgrades, or just make sure it was fully updated before wiping?

    Does all the hardware work? Which guide did you use for prep and install?

    • Loucypher@lemmy.mlOP
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      8 days ago

      It was updated before wiping yes. Those macs are abandonware, they stopped receiving firmware update a while ago. Followed no guide, the install wizard was very easy. All components worked out of the box

      • Zachariah@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        That’s great. I have a few Macs about that age, and I was really hoping to revive them with Linux.

    • TBi@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I run fedora on a 2009 thinkpad and it’s fast. I’m surprised NixOS is that much faster.

    • Loucypher@lemmy.mlOP
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      8 days ago

      No idea… a real bummer but I am grateful I could not get it to run smoothly as it pushed me to eventually land on NixOS

  • @Loucypher very promising to see this! Been running #NixOS for quite some time on several devices, and will be coming into possession of a nice iMac that’s just out of reach of OS updates.

    I was already planning on slapping Nix on it, but this just reassures me a bit more! 😅👌

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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    8 days ago

    Excellent.

    It is readily accepted that Linux reduces overhead versus Windows on the same system.

    What is less readily accepted is the same result versus macOS. Yes, it is considerably more work to get Linux running well on a Mac, since it is ultimately a closed ecosystem. But the point should be made that macOS also has a lot of unnecessary overhead over which the user has little or no control.

    The PC vs Mac thing should be dead by now, tbh, in favor of corporate vs FOSS.

  • satanmat@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Nice!

    I’ve got a similar iMac I’m looking to Linux as it is well past getting any more macOS updates.

    Did you wipe macOS?!or did you bootcamp?

    Thanks

  • Wooki@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Yay welcome to the club. Now for home manager, flakes, and modules. Its awesome

    • Johanno@feddit.org
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      8 days ago

      I still am fighting learning those! I don’t have home manager. I will avoid flakes at all costs and never heard of modules…

      My stuff works anyway

      • Wooki@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        Once you are comfy with base configs. Simple flakes become a dream simplifying your configs especially helpful when your using nix on more than one computer.

        Vimjoyer on youtube has a bunch of vids that really helps and he keeps it simple.

    • Loucypher@lemmy.mlOP
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      8 days ago

      I guess there is just less bloat running in NixOS. But then again, the difference between Debian and NixOS is very subtle. Debian/LMDE run great on that hardware

  • Mucki@feddit.org
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    8 days ago

    Thank you. Will try NixOS on a desktop soon. Speed is also very much related to the kernel, so you may want to compare kernels, too. I.e. Debian standard, Liquorix, Debian realtime, MX AHS, etc. I figured the rt kernel generally performs best for non-dGPU systems. KDE is unbearable for me, really slow on old thinkpads, while with XFCE everything is blazing fast.

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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      8 days ago

      The kernel is one of the least important components when it comes to performance.

      Kernel tweaks can eek out a couple percent here or there for your specific task (while likely regressing in others) but nothing really significant.

      FWIW though, we have lqx and rt variants in NixOS (though rt is mainline now with 6.12).

      • Mucki@feddit.org
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        7 days ago

        Generally yes.

        Here is two examples from my recent experience:

        • Run custom realtime software on rt and non-rt kernel: Huge difference when I look at milliseconds and latency.
        • I ran Minecraft recently on the standard and rt kernel, with realtime it performs much better (no dGPU)

        I will look into nixOS definitely. Last time I checked must have been 2018 hehe

        • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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          7 days ago

          Right if you have applications with rt constraints, you’ll obviously need a rt-capable OS but that’s more a matter of it being available as a feature, rather than being performant enough.

  • Avieshek@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    I have a Mid-2012 MacBook Pro, got 16GB RAM but still a spinning hard drive. How does it compare to Pop!_OS?

    • OhYeah@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 days ago

      I’ve ran both pop_os and nixos on the same laptop, albeit a newer laptop, and they felt the same to me performance wise. My experience is that if they’re using the same kernel, same init system, same desktop env, etc they’ll prob feel the same

    • Loucypher@lemmy.mlOP
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      8 days ago

      I guess PopOS performs like vanilla mint or like Ubuntu. NixOS feels very snappy even on Gnome on a 8gb machine from bloody 2012

      • Avieshek@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Would you like the point some differences like inteface (UI-UX), driver support, features, performance etc?