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adding note about using etcher when on non-nixos system. #656

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merged 1 commit into from
Jul 20, 2023

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henrik-ch
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small note to make it easier for newcomers on the RPI tutorial.

@henrik-ch henrik-ch marked this pull request as ready for review July 20, 2023 20:11
@henrik-ch henrik-ch self-assigned this Jul 20, 2023
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Good idea

@proofconstruction proofconstruction merged commit 9f3df08 into NixOS:master Jul 20, 2023
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@@ -44,6 +44,10 @@ You can download a more recent image from [Hydra](https://hydra.nixos.org/job/ni
clicking on the latest successful build (marked with a green checkmark), and copying the link to the build product image.
:::

:::{note}
It may be more convenient to use a software like [Etcher](https://www.balena.io/etcher/) to flash the image to your SD card if you are on a non-NixOS system.
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I would refrain from proliferating the term "non-NixOS": rationale here https://discourse.nixos.org/t/should-we-give-a-name-to-nix-on-non-nixos/21020/3

Also I'm not sure what's wrong with dd on any system (except WSL, where you'd use some Windows stuff for that anyway). It's there, it's fast. The dmesg thing is for convenience and could be highlighted as optional. You can also lsblk before and after plugging in the storage medium. I don't like introducing more moving parts to the process.

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While I agree with these points, I think this just underscores the fact that we shouldn't be maintaining this documentation. But where should it go? The unofficial Wiki already has some (more) information, so I'm in favor of just removing this page entirely. If there is any information in here that isn't in the Wiki, we could submit the diff there, and wash our hands of it.

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I would refrain from proliferating the term "non-NixOS": rationale here https://discourse.nixos.org/t/should-we-give-a-name-to-nix-on-non-nixos/21020/3

Thanks for that link Valentin - that makes sense - I am thinking of making a small PR to edit the non-NixOS part out - will link that PR to this one.

Also I'm not sure what's wrong with dd on any system (except WSL, where you'd use some Windows stuff for that anyway). It's there, it's fast. The dmesg thing is for convenience and could be highlighted as optional. You can also lsblk before and after plugging in the storage medium. I don't like introducing more moving parts to the process.

I can see the point of not introducing more than one tool to do the job.
I postulate that for a beginner, using Etcher is a lot more straightforward than flashing the card from the command line.
To counter that argument we can say that people that aren't comfortable in the command line shouldn't touch Nix and NixOS in the first place, but I think that we are unnecessarily excluding less experienced users by taking that approach.

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3 participants