this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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There is a part of me that wants to try this, but I have one question.
I believe this distribution allows you to have multiple versions of the same library to work with different programs at the same time, correct? Does this mean that each program downloads all its dependencies independently? If the answer is yes, I am staying with Arch. Too much bloat.
Not exactly. If one package needs foo as a dependency, and another package also needs foo, it won't download a second copy.
But if another package needs, say, an older version of foo, it can download the older version of foo and you'll have two foo packages.
This is possible because Nix packages have hashes to differentiate between them, so any package can ask for the exact version of foo it needs instead of asking for foo in general and hoping the version it gets isn't incompatible.
Pretty sure this is also different from other containerized package managers, like Flatpaks or Snaps, which I believe throw all the dependencies in with their packages so each package has exactly what it needs in its container, and which is obviously going to be much more bloated than having shared dependencies. As far as I know Nix on the other hand doesn't get any more bloated than other distros (keep in mind that regular distros like Arch will still sometimes have multiple versions of a package, for example Python).