I tried nixos. But alas, I don’t have the time to unlearn traditional Linux management and get into the groove that makes it click for others. I don’t run a homelab, my dev environment is my company’s macbook that connects to development rhel servers through ssh or vscode. I run popOs for what little time i have to tinker in my free time.
I tried tinkering with NixOS in a VM on apple silicon. The experience of finding what image to download for Apple Silicon and installing the OS was straightforward and i did manage to start getting the hang of it. But very quickly realized you start out maintaining packages through the system config file, invest some time, discover home-manager, and then later discover flakes. Then I also discovered none of the tools like neovim, python work like they do on imperative distros.
At least with python the right way to manage is to forget using pip or uv in the traditional manner and simply use the nix-shell feature per directory which is actually the most frictionless way to do that in my experience.
I can see how nix and nixos are godsend for DevOps, server folks who need reproducible builds, love configuration as code that compilss the same way every time and anywhere, and hate non-deterministic behavior.
But yes. The author is right. I too felt like the OS needs your time until you set it up just right for your needs. Daily driving it is not a install and go affair unless you already have a repo of configs built up.
And if you’re like me and anxious about having everything organized “just right” it will be a nightmare of ignorance until you find the best practices which certainly takes a lot more time and kindness on yourself than you might allow or actually possess.
Yeah, NixOS is definitely a journey. For me personally, a very fun one. You’re kinda experiencing what is was like experiencing linux for the first time. Took me like half a year to get proficient with nix in a way I was productive with it.
That configuring some programs is completely different from how it should be is a weird quirk of home-manager. I personally don’t use it, it adds a lot of complexity for not much benefit.
But for me, nix saved me in terms of linux. I‘m someone who frequently switches around devices or just completely wipes their existing ones (I‘m very messy with file management, and I just need a clean install after a year or two). It was incredibly annoying to use other distros, especially if you are tinkering a lot it can occasionally happen that you brick your install. You kinda had to document all the fixes for certain issues so that you didn‘t forget them. I could think of more things. That’s just specific to me, but Nix solves all those problems. Not sure I‘d be using linux if it wasn’t for NixOS.
