NixOS is fun once it clicks for you. It’s nice having a system you can run your way, configured your way, and there’s really no wrong way. I mean hell you can have your configuration in javascript if you REALLY wanted to. you can have everything in a single configuration file if you prefer that or you can have things in individual modules and managed via a flake.nix. You can have all your various configurations for your DEs/WMs/etc in the .config dir or you can put them all in a single file or you can have NixOS manage the individual configs for you for easy backup.
I like that it’s extremely easy to reproduce the system and back it up. my system is backed up to a private git repo and if I need to rebuild my system on another PC it’s just a matter of installing NixOS and then cloning my system repo and then I’m on the exact same setup as another machine. Also because of this and with nix-shells it makes dev work a breeze. same exact setup every time so the old argument of “well it works on my machine” doesn’t apply.
All that being said I’m not sure if I’d recommend it to others. It makes the hard things easy and the easy things hard. But it’s one of those distros where you’ll switch from it for like a week or two and then miss it and want to go back. but keep in mind those weekly/bi-weekly switches are common. sometimes you’ll just feel like you’re spending way too much time configuring your nixos system so you’ll switch to like Fedora or something so you don’t have to think about it. Or you get frustrated trying to get something to work on NixOS so you’ll switch to Arch where everything just works. but then you’ll get bored of those distros and go back to NixOS.
It’s a never ending cycle. Thankfully NixOS takes all of 10-15min to reinstall and back to the previous setup.
NixOS is fun once it clicks for you. It’s nice having a system you can run your way, configured your way, and there’s really no wrong way. I mean hell you can have your configuration in javascript if you REALLY wanted to. you can have everything in a single configuration file if you prefer that or you can have things in individual modules and managed via a flake.nix. You can have all your various configurations for your DEs/WMs/etc in the .config dir or you can put them all in a single file or you can have NixOS manage the individual configs for you for easy backup.
I like that it’s extremely easy to reproduce the system and back it up. my system is backed up to a private git repo and if I need to rebuild my system on another PC it’s just a matter of installing NixOS and then cloning my system repo and then I’m on the exact same setup as another machine. Also because of this and with nix-shells it makes dev work a breeze. same exact setup every time so the old argument of “well it works on my machine” doesn’t apply.
All that being said I’m not sure if I’d recommend it to others. It makes the hard things easy and the easy things hard. But it’s one of those distros where you’ll switch from it for like a week or two and then miss it and want to go back. but keep in mind those weekly/bi-weekly switches are common. sometimes you’ll just feel like you’re spending way too much time configuring your nixos system so you’ll switch to like Fedora or something so you don’t have to think about it. Or you get frustrated trying to get something to work on NixOS so you’ll switch to Arch where everything just works. but then you’ll get bored of those distros and go back to NixOS.
It’s a never ending cycle. Thankfully NixOS takes all of 10-15min to reinstall and back to the previous setup.