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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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That Computer Scientist - Nix is the New Arch! (thatcomputerscientist.com)

submitted 1 year ago by uthredii to c/[email protected]

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

Having options is not the same thing as documenting those options; well outlined documentation doesn’t just dictate how to do something but also points out what you may want to do i.e. filling out unknown-unknowns.

Agreed. The point is however that, with NixOS options, you do not necessarily need such documentation for unknown-knowns.

With many things however, we can simply delegate to the upstream documentation for some thing. See i.e. the paperless extra config example. We don't need to tell users how to configure their paperless, we just tell them that any upstream option goes into this settings option as an attrset.

NixOS options do to a degree fill out unknown-unknowns though, see I.e. the steam-hardware example. I've stumbled upon many handy options by searching for related options.

Just because NixOS makes for an excellent DevOps template doesn’t mean it can’t also be an excellent platform for hacking together random crap.

While the initial "hacking the crap together" phase is indeed harder in most cases, maintaining these hacks is much simpler thanks to overrides/overlays and the additive nature of NixOS options.

That quality can arguably make it "excellent" too.