So I’ve recently taken an interest in these three distros:
All of these offer something very interesting:
Access to (basically) all Linux-capable software, no matter from what repo.
Both NixOS and blendOS are based on config files, from which your system is basically derived from, and Vanilla OS uses a package manager apx to install from any given repo, regardless of distribution.
While I’ve looked into Fedora Silverblue, that distro is limited to only install Flatpaks (edit: no, not really), which is fine for “apps”, but seems to be more of a problem with managing system- and CLI tools.
I haven’t distro hopped yet, as I’m still on Manjaro GNOME on my devices.
What are your thoughts on the three distros mentioned above?
Which ones are the most interesting, and for what reasons?
Personally, I’m mostly interested in NixOS & blendOS, as I believe they may have more advantages compared to Arch;
What do you think?
I think NixOS is awesome, but it certainly doesn’t offer “access to (basically) all Linux-capable software, no matter from what repo.” - at least not natively. You can do that through containers, but you can do that with containers on any distro. Where it shines is declaring the complete system configuration (including installed programs and their configuration) in its config file (on file-based configuration, I wouldn’t really consider blendos a viable competitor).
I think NixOS is awesome, but it certainly doesn’t offer “access to (basically) all Linux-capable software, no matter from what repo.” - at least not natively.
I don’t quite agree with this. In NixOS you can write custom expressions that fetch software from any source, and stitch them into your configuration as first-class packages. So you do get access to all Linux-capable software natively, but not necessarily easily. (There is a learning curve to packaging stuff yourself.)
I use this process to bring nightly releases of neovim and nushell into my reproducible config. Ok, I do use flakes that other people published for building those projects, which is a bit like installing from a community PPA. But when I wanted to install Niri, a very new window manager I wrote the package and NixOS module expressions all by myself!
Another NixOS user (and minor package maintainer, if it matters) here. Essentially, NixOS is actually rather simple to write a configuration file for a particular program once you get the knack for the nix language and learn how to workaround the sandboxing. I would actually consider it substantially less involved as compared to (for instance) creating your own Debian package.
However, getting to this point will take a bit of effort, and this step is more or less obligatory to use software on NixOS, whereas it generally isn’t (but still is a good idea) on other distributions.
(There is a learning curve to packaging stuff yourself.)
“Learning curve” is an understatement. Nix is one of the most poorly documented projects I’ve seen, next to openstack. Coming into it with no background in functional programming didn’t help.
Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to package openstack on nix.
But I’ve tried to package other stuff, like quarto, and that was a nightmare. Nixpkgs didn’t have an updated pandoc and I spent an eternity asking around for help, to try to package it. An updated version just got pushed to unstable a few days ago. The same matrix channels I joined to ask for help have been discussing this since then. Props on them for getting it working, but anyone who says that you can easily package anything, is capping. You need to have an understanding of the nix language, nix packaging (both of which are poorly documented), and a rudimentary packaging ecosystem of what you are trying to package.
Don’t even get me started on flakes vs nonflakes.
I still use nix-shell for all my development environments, because it’s the best way for reproducible environments I can share I’ve found.
Sorry for my ignorance,
but why is blendOS not a viable competitor to NixOS?
To clarify, I was referring specifically to its ability to specify the full system configuration in its config file - not overall. But I haven’t used blendos, and my impression is mostly from a quick look at their documentation. They have a snippet with sample configuration. There, they have a “Modules” section, but I couldn’t find what modules are available, what options they have, how to configure them if we want to do something more complex than the available options.
Then containers are clearer: they have a list of installed apps, and then commands to bring them to the desired state (somewhat similar to a dockerfile). But even then, i imagine that if you have a more complex configuration, that’s going to get clunkier.
Thanks, that makes sense.
Do you think the use of OCI containers/images is a mistake/bad choice from blendOS?
How is NixOS different?
I think NixOS is awesome
how well is it suited as a daily driver for dev work & playing games?
The single killer feature that convinced me to move to NixOS is the ability to very easily keep separate development environments separate. For instance, if you’re working on multiple dev projects that have different minimum requirements, and you want to ensure that (for instance) you don’t accidentally use features from after boost 1.61 for project A, because that’s the stated requirement, but you need features from boost 1.75 in project B.
In a normal distribution, in order to set up an environment that has the proper version for project A you’d need to set up a chroot, a virtual machine, a complicated set of environment variables in a bespoke script with custom installation paths that you need to set up manually and remember to source, or just install a newer version of boost and rely on continuous integration to catch it if you screw up.
In NixOS, you can set up different shells which all reference the exact correct version of the libraries required for every project, you can have them installed simultaneously and without conflicts, and there’s even a shell hooking program that will automatically load and unload this configuration when you change directories into and out of the project folder. It makes managing many different projects much easier. It’s like a better version of venv, but for everything.
Well, for playing games I use the flatpak version of steam and it works OK.
For dev work, it’s great overall. Especially its ability to create separate reproducible environments with whatever dependencies you need for every project. However, there are some tools (rare, but they exist) that don’t work well with it, and if your dev work happens to need them, it can becomes a problem.
For day to day (i.e. web browsing), it works the same as anything, with one disadvantage: there is a disadvantage here: it downloads a lot more than other distros on update, and uses more disk space. The biggest difference between NixOS, and say Arch, is not how it behaves once it’s up and running, but in how you configure it. Specifically, you have to invest a lot of time to learn how, and set up your system initially. But then reinstalls, and (some of) the maintenance, become easier.
downloads a lot more than other distros on update, and uses more disk space
why is that?
While I’ve looked into Fedora Silverblue, that distro is limited to only install Flatpaks, which is fine for “apps”, but seems to be more of a problem with managing system- and CLI tools.
No. Your understanding to Fedora Silverblue is wrong. I can just run rpm-ostree install package.name in Silverblue, like other Fedora spins. The small disadvantage is that I need to reboot to apply this update. (re-construct)
but doesn’t that result in new A/B snapshots, or something like that?
Well, you can call it snapshots, but there is no need to think about it. In most cases, the system points to the newest snapshot (deployment 0). If a rollback is needed, I can pin to the older deployments. When a major change is to be applied (Like bump Fedora version), I’d manually mark the current deployment as dont-auto-delete.
Sure, but I’d like to have a more seamless experience, i.e. not having to open/start any “containers” or something like that.
I never used toolbox in my Fedora Silverblue system. I feel that I can’t tell the difference between using Silverblue and the default Fedora spin
Thank you; that was very insightful 😊
Also: I think rpm-ostree only supports rpm-based packages, tho; right?
Can I install .deb software too?
And is there any kind of system-as-a-config-file kind of solution available like in NixOS or blendOS?
For other systems I think distrobox and toolbox are kind the intended way to mess with them. For configuration as code ansible is a popular answer.
How well does Ansible work when I want to change my config? Is a quick reboot sufficient!
Also: I think rpm-ostree only supports rpm-based packages, tho; right?
Can I install .deb software too?
I don’t think rpm-ostree could support .deb softwares, just like dnf/yum can’t support deb packages.
Can you share your use case for trying to install a deb package in Fedora? I’m just curious.
And is there any kind of system-as-a-config-file kind of solution available like in NixOS or blendOS?
Good question. I only have a few computers, so I had never considered about it.
@zhenbo_endle @tanja you can install deb software in a seamless way using toolbox https://catalog.redhat.com/software/containers/rhel8/toolbox and a very simple Debian container
NixOS
- “The new Arch”
- Very customizable and minimalist
- Semi-Immutable
- Huge community and very old
- Very different than others
- Config-based
- Not very (new) user friendly, wouldn’t use it. Too complicated for me
BlendOS
- Doesn’t offer much new stuff for me, nothing they offer is substantial for me.
- Small dev team
VanillaOS
- “The new Linux Mint”
- Huge focus on usability and user friendliness
- Apx is basically only a wrapper for distrobox
- Small dev team (the same one that also develops Bottles)
- Huge potential, but not quite there yet
- Will recommend it to new users when it’s updated to 2.0
Silverblue
- My recommendation
- Is one of the oldest immutables and very well thought out
- Biggest dev and userbase
- You can not only install Flatpaks, but also everything else with Distrobox and rpm-ostree
- Best feature: you can easily rebase to it’s other spins or the custom ones from uBlue I just rebased this weekend from the SB to the Kinoite-Spin in just one command. I was able to “change distro” without resinstalling, and KDE was installed very cleanly without leftovers.
I mean seeing how people here act after having been on nixos for a few weeks I would say it’s an apt comparison. I swear we weren’t that obnoxious when I started using the distro in 2019 D:
I don’t think it’s an apt comparison of the distros, but I agree that both have a cult-like following. I also feel like there’s a bit of a difference in the evangelism of both distros… I don’t really understand why people evangelize Arch, and my impression is largely that (1) people mention that they’re on Arch so others know they might be having different configuration issues, or less charitably (2) people mention Arch as a weird brag because it’s seen as an “advanced” distro. In contrast people seem to recommend nix and NixOS because it solves a frankly ridiculous amount of real problems that people experience with development environments, package managers, and system management. I.e., we bring up nix and NixOS because we care about you and think it might actually be useful for you. I don’t really want to dictate what other people use or brag about using nix / NixOS, but people complain to me about different problems constantly that are just resolved by nix, so it feels wrong not to mention it. It’s frustrating because it definitely makes you seem like you’re in a cult, but it really is the right level of abstraction for package management, and as a result it solves so many problems and little frustrations.
Honestly, it’s kind of frustrating to watch people not use nix. I have nix set up for the projects at work because I got tired of them not building and people randomly changing dependencies and it taking 3-4 weeks for somebody new to the project to get the thing to compile. Everybody new that I have set up with nix gets the project working instantly, and everybody else ends up spending weeks flailing around with installation. Unfortunately, I’ve given up on recommending people use nix for the project because a number of senior people have decided that they don’t like nix and there’s a bizarre amount of drama whenever I recommend a newbie just use it to get set up (even though it has always worked out better for them). It’s just not worth the headache for me to stick my neck out, but I feel bad and it’s really frustrating how literally everybody else takes 3-4 weeks to get up and running without nix :|.
Lots of great answers here already so I will only address a couple of things that haven’t been mentioned:
Regarding Fedora Silverblue:
- Currently, Fedora Atomic Desktops are in a major shift to accept OCI container images for delivery of packages. This means that the built image becomes one compliant to OCI and that we boot into an OCI container as our system. As OCI images are relatively declarative (not to the extent that NixOS does (yet)), it becomes possible to have a set of config files (most importantly, the so-called Containerfile) in which your system is ‘declared’/‘configd’. In case you’re interested into how this looks/works, consider taking a look at uBlue’s startingpoint or if you’re more interested in the scope of configuration into Bazzite and/or Bluefin.
- apx is available as a COPR on Fedora Atomic Desktops.
- Nix can be installed on Fedora Atomic Desktops using Determinate Systems’ installer.
Regarding Vanilla OS:
- They’re also moving to a model that’s very close to where Fedora Atomic Desktops is heading towards. So, expect a similar way to config/‘declare’ your system.
What are your thoughts on the
threefour distros mentioned above?
It’s a question of polish if you’d ask me. With Fedora Atomic Desktops and NixOS being advantageous due to being more established and better funded. I wouldn’t write off Vanilla OS yet as they seem to know what they’re doing. Though, I wouldn’t keep my hopes up for blendOS as its main developer was unaware of which MAC was configured by default on blendOS (spoiler alert: none, at least at the time).
Furthermore, NixOS is literally its own thing and unfortunately infamous for its steep learning curve. If you can afford to learn and conquer NixOS, then NixOS should be the recommendation; unless (like me) you seek SELinux on your systems.
Between Fedora Atomic Desktops and Vanilla OS; Vanilla OS is still in its major rewrite/revamp. The alpha builds are there, but I wouldn’t recommend using those on production machines. Fedora Atomic Desktops, on the other hand, has been going strong for a while now and the uBlue-team has even succeeded in making the OCI-stuff accessible for the general (Linux) public. So if you want to switch now and NixOS is/seems too hard; then Fedora Atomic Desktops it is. On that note, I recommend to check out the uBlue project.
Which ones are the most interesting, and for what reasons?
Honestly, all of them are really interesting, but NixOS does the most unique stuff; with only Guix doing something similar within the Linux landscape. To give you a taste of some of the wild stuff found on NixOS; there’s the so-called Impermanence module which -to my knowledge- happens to be the closest thing to a usable stateless system we’ve got; period. Consider reading this excellent blog post in case you’re interested to know what this entails.
Silverblue is sure not limited to only flatpaks.
Oh 👀
I didn’t know that; I knew you could modify the underlying system, but doesn’t that result in new A/B snapshots, or something like that?
toolbox/distrobox
Sure, but I’d like to have a more seamless experience, i.e. not having to open/start any “containers” or something like that.
Also, can I “normally”/traditionally install software on NixOS, e.g. through Steam?
Listen to the “Linux User Space” podcast, episode 404. They explain every immutability model af of now. Ubuntu Core is missing.
Ubuntu is creating something new, looks really great but based on snaps, which are not bad packages but rely on a nonfree store that cant be replaced. So meh.
Thanks for your suggestion, but I’ll never use snaps/snapcraft/snapd by choice;
I do see the reasons for why developers/app maintainers may want to (universally) package themselves, but we’ve got Flatpak for that.
Less loopback devices = better imho
Also, can I “normally”/traditionally install software on NixOS, e.g. through Steam?
Depends on what you mean by traditionally. Steam works without needing any special setup by enabling it in your configuration, just programs.steam.enable = true. There’s also imperative package management with nix profile (don’t use nix-env -i which you will probably come across, it’s broken by design). Personally though I recommend sticking with the declarative configuration and nix-shell which temporarily brings packages in scope for the current shell only.
