Linux

48330 readers

704 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

142

I switched from Nixos to void Linux. Here's my experience so far. (self.linux)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by 7ai to c/[email protected]

79 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I hopped from arch (2010-2019) to Nixos (2019-2023). I had my issues with it but being a functional programmer, I really liked the declarative style of configuring your OS. That was until last week. I decided to try out void Linux (musl). I'm happy with it so far.

Why did I switch?

Nix is extremely slow and data intensive (compared to xbps). I mean sometimes 100-1000x or more. I know it is not a fair comparison because nix is doing much more. Even for small tweaks or dependency / toolchain update it'll download/rebuild all packages. This would mean 3-10GB (or more) download on Nixos for something that is a few KB or MB on xbps.
Everything is noticeably slower. My system used way more CPU and Ram even during idle. CPU was at 1-3% during idle and my battery life was 2 to 3.5h. Xfce idle ram usage was 1.5 GB on Nixos. On Void it's around 0.5GB. I easily get 5-7h of battery life for my normal usage. It is 10h-12h if I am reading an ebook.

Nix disables a lot of compiler optimisations apparently for reproducibility. Maybe this is the reason?

Just a lot of random bugs. Firefox would sometimes leak memory and hang. I have only 8 GB of ram. WiFi reconnecting all the time randomly. No such issues so far with void.
Of course the abstractions and the language have a learning curve. It's harder for a beginner to package or do something which is not already exposed as an option. (This wasn't a big issue for me most of the time.)

For now, I'll enjoy the speed and simplicity of void. It has less packages compared to nix but I have flatpak if needed. So far, I had to install only Android studio with it.

My verdict is to use Nixos for servers and shared dev environments. For desktop it's probably not suitable for most.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] 7ai 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah. For reproducibility I still use nix. Especially when I have to share my dev environment with a team or to spin up identical servers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can you give an example in what kind of scenario you would want "identical servers"? In my head that is where tools like ansible come into play..?

[–] 7ai 3 points 1 year ago

You can achieve similar results with ansible. But I like nix better. It is reproducible. You can think of it like docker.

Nix is also declarative and has rollback. Also, nixos-rebuild is idempotent.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The great thing about Nix is that it achieves reproducibility with the package manager. Container and Ansible depend on taking a system and documenting steps to bring it to the desired state. This state then might deviate over time (e.g. crashing while updating).

But yes, for most practical use it probably doesn't make much of a difference. For me Nix forces me to document what I'm doing, which I might not do for "quick and simple change" on other systems.