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] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

It's insanely stable but you have to have a lot of linux/programming knowledge to do even the simplest things like installing/updating your software or making little tweaks. I played with it for hours the other day and I'm just too dumb to figure it out lol I think it's just a super stable highly customizable distro for power users and a lot of people like that. If you can get over the learning curve it's a pretty powerful and unique os

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

It's kind of funny because I'd put NixOS on a complete newbies computer for sure, and recommend it to an expert... But I'm less sure if I'd tell a random mid-intermediate Linux user to switch.

Like if Grandma wants Linux on their computer to do some internet browsing for some reason... I'd absolutely put NixOS on it because it's easy to manage the system for them... But somebody who is a little familiar with Linux already might be more confused about the differences. It's kind of the ultimate beginner distro and the ultimate power-user distro, but a bit awkward between those extremes, haha.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

It's true that it can be a powerful distro but I've also heard from some users that the advanced-level documentation is lacking and only limited to forums and source code. I think maybe if the documentation was more thorough I would try nixos.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

you have to have a lot of linux/programming knowledge to do even the simplest things like installing/updating your software

So, pretty much like any other distro

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Most mainstream distro's can do all of that without a CLI.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago

Weird, every distro I've tried either has no management, or doesn't work. Just spins around loading. "Uninstalling" packages does nothing but remove them from the package manager.