Documented declarative centralized configuration of all my systems; that value can’t be overstated.
Then the fact that I can run any version of any nix package from anywhere at any time with a single terminal command,
the ability to effortlessly and cleanly switch desktop environments with completely no friction or fear,
to be able to roll back by booting into any previous configuration still on disk, or entirely rebuild any older configuration I’ve tracked in git,
Painless and fearless updates with a rolling release, very little chance of borking and I can never get out of step; doesn’t matter if I update once an hour or once a year,
I can share my settings with friends e.g. they can try out my MPV config with a single nix command, or consume my flake outputs and add it to their system with merge/overriding changes,
I can clearly version system dependencies for everything that needs them without shipping containers,
I can define development shell environments which is basically like python venvs with requires profiles but for every language,
I can remotely provision a machine, including disk partitioning and luks and initrd ssh, with a single command,
There’s a plethora of modules that make setting up complex services with sensible defaults as simple as “enable = true;”,
I guess it’s all down to use cases, eh. I have no use for most of that, so using nix makes no sense for me.
And the things that I do do/use in that list, it’s just as easy to do without nix, if not easier, such as changing the desktop environment/compositor e.g. Just edit my login shell’s config file on a single line, usually. Stuff like that. 👍 No need to learn a whole ass language for that, or learn a new domain language. I like to keep it simple when I can.
Definitely. It’s totally not the right thing for everyone But coming from windows, I remember the first time I wanted to switch from gnome to kde on arch resulted in a week of pain before just reinstalling… As someone who’s very forgetful, I also tried to write scripts to automate the changes I make on new systems, and remember what weird fixes I applied, where, and why; would usually end in disaster because of how fragile I felt everything was. I tried freebsd, debian, ubuntu, arch, manjaro, mint, even backtrack5 way back when. None of them stuck for one reason or another. NixOS is the first distro I’ve used long-term as a daily driver, and I’m pretty convinced it will be the only distro I use going forward (in one form or another).
And regarding my point about update frequency, I mention that also because of my experience with arch. Everything is user-error. Reminds me of the straight to jail meme. Update too fast? Borked. Update too slow? Believe it or not, also borked. Update without reading the forum? Straight to borked. Not so much a problem for me now.
But again, totally not for everyone. The vast majority even. But it jives with whatever part of whatever spectrums I’m on.
Documented declarative centralized configuration of all my systems; that value can’t be overstated.
Then the fact that I can run any version of any nix package from anywhere at any time with a single terminal command,
the ability to effortlessly and cleanly switch desktop environments with completely no friction or fear,
to be able to roll back by booting into any previous configuration still on disk, or entirely rebuild any older configuration I’ve tracked in git,
Painless and fearless updates with a rolling release, very little chance of borking and I can never get out of step; doesn’t matter if I update once an hour or once a year,
I can share my settings with friends e.g. they can try out my MPV config with a single nix command, or consume my flake outputs and add it to their system with merge/overriding changes,
I can clearly version system dependencies for everything that needs them without shipping containers,
I can define development shell environments which is basically like python venvs with requires profiles but for every language,
I can remotely provision a machine, including disk partitioning and luks and initrd ssh, with a single command,
There’s a plethora of modules that make setting up complex services with sensible defaults as simple as “enable = true;”,
… I could probably go on for a while but yeah
I guess it’s all down to use cases, eh. I have no use for most of that, so using nix makes no sense for me.
And the things that I do do/use in that list, it’s just as easy to do without nix, if not easier, such as changing the desktop environment/compositor e.g. Just edit my login shell’s config file on a single line, usually. Stuff like that. 👍 No need to learn a whole ass language for that, or learn a new domain language. I like to keep it simple when I can.
Definitely. It’s totally not the right thing for everyone But coming from windows, I remember the first time I wanted to switch from gnome to kde on arch resulted in a week of pain before just reinstalling… As someone who’s very forgetful, I also tried to write scripts to automate the changes I make on new systems, and remember what weird fixes I applied, where, and why; would usually end in disaster because of how fragile I felt everything was. I tried freebsd, debian, ubuntu, arch, manjaro, mint, even backtrack5 way back when. None of them stuck for one reason or another. NixOS is the first distro I’ve used long-term as a daily driver, and I’m pretty convinced it will be the only distro I use going forward (in one form or another).
And regarding my point about update frequency, I mention that also because of my experience with arch. Everything is user-error. Reminds me of the straight to jail meme. Update too fast? Borked. Update too slow? Believe it or not, also borked. Update without reading the forum? Straight to borked. Not so much a problem for me now.
But again, totally not for everyone. The vast majority even. But it jives with whatever part of whatever spectrums I’m on.