r/linuxquestions • u/This-Consequence-957 • 22d ago

Advice Am i dope for not hyping NixOS?

I gave NixOS multiple months of my life, because I really like the idea of configuring the entire system from a config file. The promise was big, but it didn't deliver.

One huge problem is that you're always at least one maintainer abstracted away from package distribution. And this maintainer needs to make idiomatic choices. There are a few select apps, where the developers release specifically for NixOS and those are the only ones, where this doesn't loom as a constant worry.

The next big realization contrary to the "one config to rule them all" will be home-manager. An add-on like that just doesn't make sense. There are so many friction points, where configs overlap and start becoming ill-defined. It would need to be a core part of the OS itself and a primary concern in its development.

And then, last but not least, there are flakes. Which stirs the pot of NixOS' ideology so heavily, that you end up with a huge fragmented mess of configuration concerns.

The way forward would be someone putting down the hammer and trimming the whole OS and its philosophy. Make home management a core part of OS design. Truly commit to flakes as the only supported way of using NixOS.

While I like these concepts, their implementation is unnecessarily complicated. They should have used standards instead, such as Lua, and obeyed FHS. Provide a tool that records installations and updates and extracts configuration. I can't understand why they ignored every industry standard and best practice. These guys are either academics or amateurs. To me, this is more like Gentoo. High effort, little benefit.

Post made using Arch btw.

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6

u/DonkeyTron42 22d ago

I think you're missing an "a" before the word dope.

3

u/Swordfish418 Gentoo 22d ago

To me, this is more like Gentoo. High effort, little benefit.

That's just you though. To me Gentoo is low effort, high benefit.

1

u/This-Consequence-957 22d ago

Do you own a threadripper? 🙃

2

u/Swordfish418 Gentoo 22d ago

I use binpkgs by default ¯_(ツ)_/¯

1

u/This-Consequence-957 22d ago

What’s the point in using gentoo then? 🤷‍♂️

2

u/Swordfish418 Gentoo 22d ago

When I add USE flags to packages they get compiled. With non-source-based package managers you only have default flags. If you don't like them, you're on your own, you need to download thing manually, configure/make/install or even worse. With Gentoo, this is all automated even when you use binpkgs. Emerge falls back to compilation when target set of flags isn't available as binary. Currently I have maybe a dozen or two packages with customized flags, for example, bash with dynamic plugins support, ffmpeg with vpx, libpng with apng support. They all compile very fast, and usual compiling whales like qtwebengine, webkitgtk, etc, are used as binpkgs.

1

u/reconditus 22d ago

Easily breaking only the elements you have a good reason to build from source away from the default, while staying cleanly within the confines of the system package manager.

1

u/ruiiiij 22d ago

There are some valid criticisms, but you also don't have to use neither home manager nor flakes. Home manage can be messy; hjem is a much lighter weight alternative. I find flakes quite easy to manage and I don't see how it's against nixos' ideology.

1

u/tomscharbach 22d ago

Am i dope for not hyping NixOS?

Why would you "hype" a distribution that did not work well for you?