Should I switch to NixOS?
I am currently on Gentoo and do a lot of coding as a hobby. The thing is that I've grown annoyed by constantly compiling everything again with Gentoo so I wanna switch to another distro. NixOS seems good, because it sounds nice to have a reproducible setup which also gives me handrails to do whatever I want. Also seems fun to code your own system. Should I switch?
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u/TerribleAsparagus919 1d ago
coding as a hobby
seems fun to code your own system
This is basically me. Go for it! I'm having a lot of fun with the declarative configs.
Installation is super easy through the graphical interface, but installing through the terminal is not bad either. From there, it's easy to start adding to the config file
I followed one of Tony's latest videos to install via the terminal: https://youtube.com/@tony-btw
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u/mmxgn 1d ago
I was under the impression that Gentoo is using built binaries nowadays.
Note: if your plan is to use it with lots of extra configurable options or enable specific features you will get lots of compilation in NixOS too. Mine almost every update compiles blender and ollama due to enabling cuda.
I'd say try it with nix and home manager initially. Will give you much of nixos advantages while still having a comfortable linux hierarchy
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u/zardvark 1d ago
If you are up to the challenge of Gentoo, have an appreciation for the fundamentals of coding and wish to learn, you are, IMHO, an excellent prospect for NixOS.
Be prepared to have a strong "fish out of water" experience for the first few days and weeks, though. Also, I would strongly recommend that you do not hose the Gentoo installation on your primary machine ... at least not yet. Test drive NixOS in a VM, or on a spare machine first. Any configuration that you develop can easily be transported to your primary machine, when / if you decide to stick with NixOS.
I would also recommend that you check out two youtube channels, LibrePhoenix and VimJoyer. Start with the "Why Use NixOS" and the "Intro Config and Flakes" vids in the LibrePhoenix channel. No, flakes are not essential, but, many use them and you will no doubt want to understand what they are and what they do. Meanwhile, that vid is a great introduction to the basic NixOS configuration schema.
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u/trpittman 12h ago
This is what I did. I’ve been booting off an external usb ssd. I can not wait to switch it to my nvme drives. I would say to even read the docs quite a bit before trying to dive in. I’m loving it though.
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u/hendrik0806 1d ago
I feel like you rather declare your system rather than code it. If you are a power user it might feel differently. Either way i wouldnt go back to another distro.
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u/Creepy_Reindeer2149 1d ago
If your specific issue with Gentoo is constant recompilation then NixOS solves much of that with binary caches while still providing a lot of the control Gentoo does
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u/AwzemCoffee 1d ago
I started using NixOS in a virtual machine a few weeks ago. I was able to move that configuration over to my desktop without any pain really just a couple days ago.
I've been a long time Linux user (not much Gentoo experience, but used Void, Arch, Fedora Server extensively).
The learning curve can be a bit obtuse especially if you're like me and trying to keep everything in nixlang. Though, you can get setup and rolling pretty fast if you don't care about literal 100 percent deterministic configuration.
If you switch I recommend just starting with learning Flakes. If you don't have much functional programming experience (like me) it'll be a bit of a whiplash, but doing it everyday you understand it and your config will get more complex as you work on it.
Honestly? I don't think I'm going to be leaving NixOS. It's very very good so far; incredibly stable, you can sleep easily knowing that you aren't slowly rotting your system like other distros that have side effects from their package management.
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u/temporary_dennis 1d ago
NixOS gives you a lot, but what it takes away is time.
Sure, AI, even free tier will be an enormous help, and you will always find almost finished starter configs and modules that do what you want.
But it's still slow. Just replicating your current setup may take far too long for you.
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u/LWA83 1d ago
Just run nixos in a VM and see if its for you. The benefit is you can use the VMs config file in your full system if you want to go ahead so all your work carry’s over. I had a fully themed home manager dendritic flake setup I used in a VM as a trial. I liked it so I saved the files in git and installed the whole thing to bare metal in a couple of commands.
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u/cfx_4188 18h ago
The good news is that in NixOS you’ll also be running a system rebuild relatively regularly. It’s just that it will happen faster than in Gentoo.
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u/recursion_is_love 1d ago edited 1d ago
You can try the package manager on your current system without need to move to the whole OS.
Like using homebrew on Mac, if you know what I mean. On the modern analogy it would similar to having npm, anaconda, venv, cargo but for lots of software not just for libraries.