Linux

48743 readers

1155 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Why everyone is switching to NixOS ? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

158 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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 !

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

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

They're not but nixos users are REALLY loud, as in, they can't spend a single day without talking about it.

New Arch. Both still worse than Silverblue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Agreed, Silverblue is great. I would love a declarative system, but Nix just doesn't make it easy with its sprawling documentation and mix of new and old parts. I was trying to follow a guide for Home Manager, but couldn't use it because they were using flakes, I was still on the "old" configuration.nix style.

You can't make all things declarative either. If I can only have things 50% declarative, it kinda defeats the point.

I also still tried to use flatpaks since nix doesn't have sandboxing and is slower on updates, but its font configuration was broken.

Nix overall feels like it's requires a lot of workarounds, moreso than Silverblue.

But hey, at least if I ever want to try it out again, I just need to copy in my configuration.nix and make things work from there.

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

Never heard about Silverblue, but you may want look at GNU Guix. It is also a functional package manager and I've heard from some people that they liked the guix documentation more (not sure if that's true). Also it uses scheme for configuration rather than some special-purpose language.

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

Yup, I did the same thing. I really wanted to make it work but I think it just needs some time to mature. Once it has some clean documentation and polishing it'll be really cool.

I really liked how NixOS has a hardware config repo. I have a Framework, used the config, and everything just worked. I mean it usually does on other distros too but it's nice to know that if there's a config it'll be guaranteed to work.

I'm currently really enjoying kinoite. I think it also has some documentation issues but it's also not as radically different from your average distro as NixOS..