this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Hi everyone!

I saw that NixOS is getting popularity recently. I really have no idea why and how this OS works. Can you guys help me understanding all of this ?

Thanks !

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I used NixOS for a couple of years. My experience is like this:

  1. It is a rolling release (mostly)
  2. You write a declarative configuration for your system, e.g., my config will say I want Neovim with certain plugins, and I can also include my Neovim configuration
  3. It is stable, and when it breaks it is easy to go back
  4. Packages are mostly bleeding edge
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Note that there's both the rolling unstable channel and a bi-annual stable release channel.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Important to note that NixOS has both a rolling release and point release version.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The configuration stuff seems great. I guess it reduce the struggle of porting a full config from one pc to another right ?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Yes absolutely. It is really great. It is also a source of frustration, e.g., missing configuration options, non-obvious options and so on. Overall it works well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You can even define configurations for different systems/hosts/users from a single place. I'ev atomized my config and I can reuse lots of parts for my different machines. Also my user config is nearly identical (except hardware specific things).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are you still using it and happy with it? I've been increasingly setting single purpose dev VMs in server, and a declarative configuration system would make the process of spinning them up faster and more robust. My current shell script system is clunky, and I've been looking at Ansible.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not using it anymore. Although I'm thinking about going back to it. The NixOS learning curve is a bit more steep than most other distros.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
  1. Some level of frustration with the nix language and the configuration
  2. Wanting to try various obscure Python packages

Nothing too major. Just already knowing how to make things work in other distros vs investing more time into learning to do it the NixOS way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I have been using Arch and Fedora. Considering Fedora Silverblue too. Everything is working well, so not in a rush to distro hop.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Wow, that sounds really cool (specially the config thing). I'll have to try it sometime.