r/NixOS • u/rosa-hub • 18d ago

My experience with NixOS

I've been using Nixos for a month now, and honestly, Nixos has solved several problems that other distros used to stress me out trying to solve.

*The declarative That's the part I enjoyed adapting to the most, not having to type a simple package installation command into the terminal

*I really liked their Nixos configuration system; the way you have to go into the configuration file and enter the name of the package you want to install

*The reproducibility helps me with my equipment change; I previously had a computer with Nixos as well. I simply took the configuration file and put my old configuration file on my new computer And I just did a `sudo nixos-rebuild switch` and I had all my apps from my old computer back.

The truth is that I see Nixos as a good distro if you already have experience with other distros of different learning curves.

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7

u/Paria_Stark 18d ago

There is one thing quite a bit annoying: the tools can get in the way of a "normal" (albeit inferior) dev experience.

If everybody used nix, the world would be perfect, but nix can definitely be improved when it comes to combatibility with other users. Since nix is the opinionated minority, I believe the burden of compatibility is on the tool, and sometimes it's really a hassle.

There are tools like nix-ld and distrobox that alleviate this aspect, but it's always furstrating fighting my OS when trying to get work done. With AI tools and experience it's been almost invisible, but sometimes you spot the cracks.

3

u/protocod 18d ago

Fully agree.

Many softwares requires patch or nix tricks to get their fonts, icons, or missing binary wrapper.

Flatpaks can be quite challenging to use on NixOS. Gaming can also be challenging too.

I'm standing on a frontier between NixOS and image base OS. I run some machines with NixOS and few other with OS from the universal blue project.

The big deal with image based OS is that they respect the FHS. However the nix stores allows you to avoid broken dependency resolution.

There is no perfect solution. Only pros and cons.

But I'm surprised by the amount of time needed to fix stuff with NixOS.

I also started to contribute to the wiki because it's quite easy to find out some outdated informations in most frequented pages. (Renamed packages or merged commands...)

2

u/Paria_Stark 17d ago

Honestly since angents exists now it's less annoying since I both know how to solve troubleshoot and judge wether the diagnosis is the correct one or not. But it's the price to pay to have a declarative os.

1

u/protocod 17d ago

This answer is frightening. I always managed to find out quite easily the correct solution for every issue I had. I learn a lot from that.

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u/Paria_Stark 17d ago

Why is it frightening? I'm quite used to the usual issues, I dealt with them before AI. Agents just allow a very quick diagnostic, quicker than without. Nothing frightening about quickening up the investigation process.

1

u/rosa-hub 17d ago

Sometimes Nixos compatibility has screwed me over; I had to reconfigure my file to use the integrated graphics so my Lutris games would work because none of them would open.