NixOS! Definitely not for beginners, and also definitely not for people who are used to the arch way and want something similar.
It’s a declarative OS, versus most Linux distros which are imperative:
Declarative: You define exactly what is what, such as what packages should be on your system, your configs, etc.
imperative: you modify those stuff yourself after initialization (installing).
So, instead of having to install KDE and change my display manager to use it, I just add this line to my configuration file:
services.xserver.plasma5.enable = true;
If something wrong happens, I just change the config file to its old version. I can also share this config, and then the other person can run nixos-rebuild to get my exact system configuration.
Absolutely agree, it’s a very steep learning curve but once it clicks it’s hard to go back to the old. It’s good on the desktop but I started running it on my server recently and I can’t stress how nice it is to just see everything in one place, especially with nix flakes. It’s been difficult with some stuff like running firefish (formerly calckey) but it’s hard to come by services that don’t have good support
NixOS! Definitely not for beginners, and also definitely not for people who are used to the arch way and want something similar.
It’s a declarative OS, versus most Linux distros which are imperative:
So, instead of having to install KDE and change my display manager to use it, I just add this line to my configuration file:
services.xserver.plasma5.enable = true;If something wrong happens, I just change the config file to its old version. I can also share this config, and then the other person can run
nixos-rebuildto get my exact system configuration.Absolutely agree, it’s a very steep learning curve but once it clicks it’s hard to go back to the old. It’s good on the desktop but I started running it on my server recently and I can’t stress how nice it is to just see everything in one place, especially with nix flakes. It’s been difficult with some stuff like running firefish (formerly calckey) but it’s hard to come by services that don’t have good support
I really want to give NixOS a try when I have some time to learn. I’ve been on Arch for a couple years now, and I’m ready for a change. Lol.
Any places you recommend going to learn how to get started in addition to the official docs?
You should definitely use the tool called home manager for per user configs, they have good docs too and make configs for popular programs super easy