Someone I know said they wanted to try Linux rather than spend thousands of dollars on a new PC because they've been using their windows 10 PC without security updates for months now and it started to do things that freaked them out a little bit. They wanted to use it in a user friendly way.
So starting with the stable NixOS base which allowed the easy install of Davinci Resolve for this user, I created this YAD based GUI to help manage the system.
https://github.com/nerd2ninja/waifuos-control-panel
This is very half baked. Basically only the part that adds new programs and removes programs then rebuilds the system actually works. It was vibe coded as well, but this is the idea. The starting point. Here's the vision:
- Install and remove programs graphically
- Garbage collect, optimize store, and remove user specified revisions (space saving stuff)
- View system information (currently has a "works on my machine" problem, but basically a fastfetch output plus NixOS version, System generations, Disk usage, and nix store size display
- Update the system with notifications. Very difficult to do. I upgraded from 24.11 to 25.11 and that involved multiple config changes that I only learned were needed from terminal output, so parsing that (or getting it from documentation) and generating fixes from the user's config is not going to be easy.
In addition to this, I also wanted to make a devbox based UI so that devs who are used to making exe files in VSCode could have a similar experience packaging an app for NixOS
Contributions welcome.
While the current code base is LLM assisted, its still neat enough to be readable, so lets not open massive PRs. Try to keep it one function at a time.
What is in your opinion the best graphical software manager you've ever encountered? You're not allowed to say waifuos, haha.
Pfff no my shit is complete ass right now. Although I do generally like YAD because Linux has a lot of terminal based programs and YAD being something that works with linux bash allows you to kinda easily take the output of a terminal application and display it in a GUI
Now, the best Linux graphical software manager is probably steam lmao, but to be more inspiring I'll say I'm inspired a lot by Garuda
Right! Garuda is nice. I didn't even think of Steam... but you may actually be right about that one. It's the cream of the crop, as much as a diss that is to basically everything else out there, lol.
I had ZenWorks at work when it launched in the late 90s (early adopter) and it was, especially for that time - and quite a bunch of years after - comparatively sublime. Took forever to set up a new distribution, was reboot prone on Windows 95 (multiple times for a single install, because why not), and wasn't without bugs, but if I think back now, and see all those "modern" app stores that are marketing machines / sales funnels first and foremost (this also goes for Steam though) I really wish we just had clean software management solutions.
So what features are the most important?
I think I'd personally vote navigation / categorization and search integrity. I don't want scams when I type in "bitcoin wallet", or worse "<name of wallet>" [1] but it needs to be combined with clean UI and I need to be able to see what I already have quickly.
So maybe it's really good UX + integrity that makes the difference? Not sure.
and get a sponsored crypto.com trading app as the top result; yes, I'm looking at you, Google, ya buncha irresponsible scammy assmilkers. ↩
Recently got a new laptop 8gb/500gb from China for NZ$300 (USD$200) and immediately installed debian.
Would not know how to use the Microsoft OS it came with and do not want to...have not used Microsoft for over 25 years.
Synaptic Package Manager is easy GUI to use for installing and removing programs.
Increasingly the smaller screen laptops available or touchscreen pad with keypad add on- not sure if they will operate on linux?
To get a true laptop of over 4gb ram I had to buy a 14 inch model.
Hopefully linux compatible laptops will remain available in the future.