this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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Why not? It always seemed to me like a lot of duplicated work to package everything on every distro.
Yes, but each package manager has it's (dis-)advantages. It's great to have flatpak and docker to be able to run software on almost all distros, but the OS still needs a way to update.
Almost all immutable distros use multiple package manager.
All those OS support distrobox and docker additionally.
NixOS is unique because it uses the only potent package manager (if we don't count that one reimplementation of Nix). Calling the others "package managers" becomes mostly a courtesy when NixOS enters the picture.
look_what_they_need_to_mimic_the_fraction_of_our_power.png
I don't consider myself a dumb person but I couldn't figure out nix when last I decided to play with it. Theoretically it seems super interesting to me, but I really just can't dedicate the time again now to learn that esoteric syntax.
The docs for NixOS aren't good. Much knowledge is on many blogs but who knows them all?
Having the OS defined declaratively is great but I also dislike the Nix language.
Once it's setup NixOS is great. Sharing configs with PC and laptop is awesome. Rollbacks are baked in.
Going off the https://github.com/Misterio77/nix-starter-configs helped me gettung started.
I absolutely loved NixOS on paper, and it's undoubtedly the best way to combat updates that break my dependency trees, but I still found myself spending a majority of my time attempting to hard-code various app configuration files into my convoluted
configuration.nixwith its esoteric syntax rather than actually using my computer. Am I missing something, or does a good install script covering my favorite packages and a git bare repo storing my dot-files get me 90% of the way there without the hassle of bending my whole OS around a single nix config monstrosity?Agreed, I'm also considering switching to an install script + btrfs snapshots. It worked quite well a few years ago, altough it doesn't solve configuration drift.
Only if you reinstall every time you change the configuration. And never need to do anything remotely fancy.
The syntax is just the outer layer, the whole concept inside it is alien. It's like a smartphone for a person who's only seen books.
I found zero to nix to be a good tutorial