3
Why many people are switching to NixOS ? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by L0Wigh@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml
14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi everyone!

I saw that NixOS is getting popularity recently. I really have no idea why and how this OS works. Can you guys help me understanding all of this ?

Thanks !

all 15 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] moldyringwald@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

It's insanely stable but you have to have a lot of linux/programming knowledge to do even the simplest things like installing/updating your software or making little tweaks. I played with it for hours the other day and I'm just too dumb to figure it out lol I think it's just a super stable highly customizable distro for power users and a lot of people like that. If you can get over the learning curve it's a pretty powerful and unique os

[-] Chobbes@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

It's kind of funny because I'd put NixOS on a complete newbies computer for sure, and recommend it to an expert... But I'm less sure if I'd tell a random mid-intermediate Linux user to switch.

Like if Grandma wants Linux on their computer to do some internet browsing for some reason... I'd absolutely put NixOS on it because it's easy to manage the system for them... But somebody who is a little familiar with Linux already might be more confused about the differences. It's kind of the ultimate beginner distro and the ultimate power-user distro, but a bit awkward between those extremes, haha.

[-] blackstrat@lemmy.fwgx.uk 0 points 1 year ago

All I year about from the linux community is NixOS and btrfs, neither of which I have any interest in. It almost feels like someone with an agenda is promoting these two with how prevelant they are.

[-] 80KiloMett@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 year ago

I like using btrfs with Arch because of the snapshots. If an update breaks something I can just boot into a snapshot from grub keep using my PC and solve the problem later. It's very useful... yes... very... you should try it... come... try btrfs... it's warm and cozy... INSTALL IT!

[-] blackstrat@lemmy.fwgx.uk 2 points 1 year ago

I have tried btrfs in the past and when it goes wrong you are utterly shafted. You can't even mount it as a read only file system, it will just lock you out entirely. And the support isn't great, I ended up finding something that had a disclaimer along the lines of "only run this if you really know what you're doing", but obviously I didn't as the documentation didn't tell me enough to know. So the only people who could possibly know are the developers of the file system themselves. Anyway, I was 2 days in to trying to recover my data by this point so I gave it a go, nothing to lose - it refused to do anything. Great.

So in summary I'm not going to try it again.

[-] chayleaf@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

can confirm, I've recently had my btrfs partition on NixOS go permanently read-only because it ran out of metadata space (which you can't extend without write access, even though btrfs does reserve 0.5GB of metadata space) so I've switched to bcachefs

[-] Tilted@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago

I used NixOS for a couple of years. My experience is like this:

  1. It is a rolling release (mostly)
  2. You write a declarative configuration for your system, e.g., my config will say I want Neovim with certain plugins, and I can also include my Neovim configuration
  3. It is stable, and when it breaks it is easy to go back
  4. Packages are mostly bleeding edge
[-] priapus@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

Important to note that NixOS has both a rolling release and point release version.

[-] Atemu@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Note that there's both the rolling unstable channel and a bi-annual stable release channel.

[-] JASN_DE@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

everyone

Now that's what I'd call a stretch...

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Indeed, why would I switch, already have been running NixOS for 10+ years.

[-] L0Wigh@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I'll edit. That was clearly a stretch

[-] datendefekt@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

Glancing over the website, I thought it's an immutable OS, like Fedora Silverblue. I could imagine that it might be cool to use with Ansible and stuff. But for an average user? I can't really see the advantages in respect to the work you have to put in.

[-] nani8ot@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

It is an immutable distro, altough it isn't image-based like Fedora's rpm-ostree.

NixOS basically replaces Ansible because the Nix package manager achieves the same goals already (configuration, deployment, ...).

But I agree, the work necessary to put into this non-standard distro makes it hard to recommend for a casual user.

this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
3 points (100.0% liked)

Linux

47744 readers
1053 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
nooter692@lemmy.ml
MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz