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 !
People love Nix because of the OS configuration based around a single config file. Essentially, you define your system configuration in this file, including installed programs, then you rebuild your system based on that configuration.
The beauty here is that you can easily move this file to another machine running NixOS and reproduce your configuration there. You can also roll back changes by simply rebooting and choosing the last known good build and you’re back in business.
It’s in no way “everyone”, just a vocal minority.
I use
ArchNixOS BTW.
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
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).
Note that there’s both the rolling unstable channel and a bi-annual stable release channel.
Wow, that sounds really cool (specially the config thing). I’ll have to try it sometime.
Do you run the gnu guix distro or just use the package manager? Because iirc it uses only free software, even for drivers. So I imagine it is not that easy to find compatible hardware.
I run the complete system. It’s true that the standard iso comes with the linux-libre kernel and the standard channel (think repo) contains only free software. However there is the nonguix channel which comes with the full linux kernel, and all the proprietary drivers you could ask for.
Nonguix offer an iso with the full kernel too in case you have a proprietary wifi card and don’t have ethernet for the initial setup. The nonguix README I think is pretty clear, but Systemcrafters also made an excellent guide for doing this.
My wifi card unfortunately requires proprietary drivers and I have personally never had an issue with guix + nonguix for all my software needs, proprietary and otherwise.
Hope that helps profligate!
Does it actually require proprietary drivers or just proprietary firmware? I don’t know of any wifi cards that actually require proprietary drivers on Linux.
Here’s the straightforward version of why I use it:
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The entire state of your operating system is defined in a config file, and changes are made by changing the config file. This makes it super easy to reproduce your exact system many times and to know where all the many different configuration elements that describe your system are located.
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Updates are applied atomically, so you don’t have to worry about interrupting the update process and if it fails, the previous state of your system is still bootable. By default every time you change something, you get another option in the boot menu to roll back to.
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Making container-like sub systems is super easy when you’re familiar with nix, so you can have as many different enclaves as you like for different software versions, development environments, desktop setups, whatever without taking a performance hit. Old versions of stuff are very accessible without breaking your new stuff.
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The package manager has a lot of software and accessing nonfree stuff is straightforward. Guix looks rad, but nix ended up being the more practical compromise for my usecase. I didn’t want to have to package a heap of software the moment I made the switch.
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They don’t know about Debian stable.
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.
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.
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…
I will switch as soon as I can get proprietary Nvidia drivers to work on my laptop.
That is the main reason I can’t use my laptop with linux. It has a 3060 in it. I work as a dev and need to use 2-3 external displays with my laptop. The driver combined with x or wayland is atrocious, I tried 20 distros and I can’t get it to work. The saddest thing is that none of the tech is exotic in any way. It’s just HDMIs and AOC 24 inch monitors…
I keep seeing trends with Linux distribution like teenager looking for new fashion.
I think it’s mostly the very young Linux user who hope from one distribution to the another over and over whereas many just stick with what they got : Ubuntu, Debian, mint, maybe fedora.
NixOS is certainly interesting tho.
Atleast NixOS isnt one of the countless Arch based distros emerged since pandemic
I’ve been looking at it after numerous times I update Fedora only to have some tool break that I use daily. Then I spend a chunk of the day getting Virtualbox working again so I can do my job (write code for websites).
I haven’t made the jump, but it looks very interesting.
I’ve made the jump twice, and jumped back twice.
Conda and any other reproducible computing library that relies on LHS Linux filesystem just doesn’t work on it (okay it does, but more as an obstacle)
I’m okay with having nix the package manager on my default arch system though, since it is incredibly useful for cross compiling, and it let’s me modify my system however I want.
Have you tried putting it into a buildFHSUserEnv?
I also often put the “dirty” packaged AI/python stuff (which is unfortunately quite a lot) into Dockerfiles if I don’t want to package it cleanly with Nix.
I did, but it still doesn’t quite act right, especially if I need to build extra packages within the environment
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I will continue to use Arch btw…
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this comment reads suspiciously like it was written by an LLM (eg ChatGPT). was it? please don’t do that!
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thanks for clarifying. i’m deleting your generated comment per rule 4 (spamming); if another admin wants to undelete it i would be surprised.
please do not post LLM-authored comments without clearly labeling them as such. imo this is common sense, and doesn’t need its own rule, rule 4 is sufficient.
Do you use Nix, personally? Also, it’s crazy that I found this post while thinking about distro hopping.
The above poster seems to use more ChatGPT than Nix, personally.
