I’ve been curious about NixOS for quite some time. Reading about it I couldn’t see how the config sharing capabilities, setup, or rollabck would be better than Arch and sharing the list of installed packages, using downgrade or chroot.
So I decided to run NixOS in a VM and I’m still confused. An advantage I can see for NixOS is its better use of cores and parallel processing for packages install.
It’s clear that I’m missing something so please help me understand what it is.
Edit: Thank you to everyone in this great community! It’s always so nice to have a constructive and sane discussion.
After reading so many comments, they all confirm what I’ve read before and I may realize that my real problem is already having a stable system and no need for the great NixOS options that are very neat but would not benefit my specific and simplistic needs.
That being said I can’t refrain myself from being curious and will continue testing NixOS.
The need for only 2 config files is the top of the iceberg but hiding more complex configuration to rely on. Not that I really have too much spare time but I do enjoy learning and tweaking NixOS. With its current development state, things are changing a lot so it can keep me busy for months. That’s probably what I was mostly looking for: another toy to play with.
Along my journey I will learn a lot about NixOS and may find a feature that will motivate my switch to it. Thanks again for all your precious feedback!
I’ll also take this opportunity to share the best help I’ve found so far to start with NixOS: https://github.com/MatthiasBenaets/nixos-config And his 3 hours (!) video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AGVXJ-TIv3Y
That’s what I keep reading and why I would like to give it a try. For now I’m still confused how this is easier/more efficient than sharing your list of packages, restoring a backup, or using downgrade in Arch. I’m really interested because I like to try new stuff, especially if they bring something of interest.
I really have hard time to see the difference for now after my first setup in a VM but also because imaging my full Arch system on a new machine 2 years ago only took me an hour and less than 10 command lines.
Again, I’m genuinely trying to understand what I’m missing. From my reading NixOS seems to be the only distro I could switch to.
my thoughts which may have inaccuracies: in NiXOS The package declares the exact version of dependencies needed. when you update nixos it takes up quite a bit of space because you may have some links to one library but another app uses something else and both are stored on drive, and your old install is still there to roll back to. On other distros a package lists dependencies, but during updates a single dependency may have a bug fix point release, and upRev. so the behaviour of that app you added may change depending on all it subparts changing. So when you install non nix today or 6 months that package also determines how it may function. if Dependencies updated in the meantime your install may act different. NiX prevents this since you have a repeatable install.
Thanks for taking time to share this detailed thought. That’s an interesting point I forgot because I didn’t experience any related issues over 15 years with Arch but that’s still a nice approach. I can certainly see why this is a big plus for NixOS.
I haven’t had issues with my OpenSUSE Leap install in 7 years either, there is careful curating, and automated QA testing, and roll back snapshotting if you break something while messing about. But I have a NixOS machine also. It provides a nice way of configuring a repeatble system, which is probably a huge bebefit for folks making / deploying linux devices that are 100% repeatable.
Because your Nix config also configures your software, not just installs it. Admittedly, with base NixOS that’s more true with server software than desktop. But with the addition of home manager you can also configure many desktop apps in your Nix config.
Thank you for this addition. I very much appreciate the fediverse community who is helping people to understand things, share their knowledge, and acting nicely (if we exclude some rare people who are clearly not used to live within a sane community). I’ve seen home manager but this raised one more question to me: what’s the added value compared to stow for example? Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
I’ve never used stow so I can’t speak to it specifically. Home manager is nice for two reasons. If you’re already using NixOS you can have one unified config for your whole system. And because Nix is a programming language generation these configs, you may be able to do thing you wouldn’t otherwise. It also has some nice defaults that you may not get without.
Sure but not everything can be defined in the Nix config. Firewalls have an issue, some options for packages are not implemented yet. For example systemd networkd doesn’t have all the features implemented.
