this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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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.
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I switched to NixOS almost two years ago, and it's really nice being able to define my whole system in a single set of config files. If my hard drive dies or I switch computers, I can just reinstall NixOS using my config files and everything will be set up the exact same way. It's extremely solid and I don't need to baby my system because if it breaks I can just reinstall everything back to normal.
And I can share parts of the config between devices, so when I change my Neovim or VSCodium configs using Home-Manager it gets synced to my other devices, as well as being saved as part of my NixOS config files.
+1 for Nix. In my case I switched from Opensuse Tumbleweed to NixOS about a year ago. Before NixOS I had spent years distro-hopping fairly regularly just in an effort to find something that was atleast moderately simple to setup/troubleshoot, (I'm no developer, and my Linux technical expertise really only covers the basics) and that would be resilient to the careless tinkering I tended to do in general.
Using NixOS on a daily basis has been a complete pleasure. After experiencing the sane-ness of a declarative system I'll never go back. As of late, NixOS seems to have been growing steadily in popularity, although most of its userbase are experienced developers, businesses, and almost no Linux beginners. This is understandable given its current state and reputation as an advanced distro, but I am of the opinion that--if a GUI software store for nixpkgs and a GUI program for editing the system's configuration options were developed--NixOS could quickly become one of the most desktop user-friendly distros available given its underlying immutability and unrivalled stability in general.
I don't understand how tinkering proofness achieved through learning "Nix syntax" is any better for the average joe compared to a the default settings of tumbleweed including snapper.
NixOS has snapshots built in as well but I've never had to actually use them to recover anything because Nix packages are built in isolation from one another, and their dependencies are declared, so packages can't break each other when installing or upgrading them.
NixOS is also an immutable distro, which prevents accidental bad changes to the system. Tumbleweed is very friendly and stable compared to many other distros out there, but it's still vulnerable to accidental breakage in the same ways most other distros are. I think the cherry on top for the average joe using Nix compared to OpenSUSE, however, is just the fact that the Nixpkgs repository absolutely dwarfs OpenSUSE's.
Luckily, if you prefer to stick with whatever distro you're running already, but want the power of the Nix package manager, you can get the best of both worlds and install just Nix (without NixOS) on any distro.
I’ve been exploring with Nix lately but mainly just using nix-shell on my server that runs Debian. But I like the idea of what you laid out. I started reading through the NixOS docs the other day and it made it a fair way through. But I was kind of just looking for some like boilerplate config files that would set up a system in the way you describe. Anything you could point me to?
When you install NixOS it asks like what DE you want and what timezone and then generates a basic config file for those settings and your partition layout. It does have a GUI installer now that does that but you can also run
nixos-generate-configand it'll generate a basic config file. There's also a bunch of people's configs online, here's mine.Im still toying with the idea of nix (using Fedora rn) but I don’t code at all rn and don’t need to rebuild my system all the time so I think it’s pointless