Why everyone is switching to NixOS ?
Why everyone is switching to NixOS ?
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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I used NixOS for a couple of years. My experience is like this:
- It is a rolling release (mostly)
- 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
- It is stable, and when it breaks it is easy to go back
- Packages are mostly bleeding edge
Note that there's both the rolling unstable channel and a bi-annual stable release channel.
Important to note that NixOS has both a rolling release and point release version.
The configuration stuff seems great. I guess it reduce the struggle of porting a full config from one pc to another right ?
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.
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).
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.
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.
What are you using instead?
I have been using Arch and Fedora. Considering Fedora Silverblue too. Everything is working well, so not in a rush to distro hop.
Why did you stop using it?
- Some level of frustration with the nix language and the configuration
- 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.
Wow, that sounds really cool (specially the config thing). I'll have to try it sometime.