I have been seeing a lot of NixOS content recently, and a part of me appreciates the ideology of Nix.
- No need to remember how you configured your machine (running some random command inside some random directory).
- Separate the config from the physical machine. Redeploy elsewhere instantly.
I loved the idea even before I knew Nix when I switched from Gnome to i3 way back in 2017. Configure your i3 config once and never worry about “new” (read “breaking”) features from the distro. I used the same config for nearly a decade with minor changes, till I switched to niri this year. So the way I interact with my desktop has not changed for a long time.
Back to the topic; while Nix configures your OS in a declarative manner, it’s very different from what I’m used to. I have managed Ubuntu systems in depth, and now I know there is a huge carry-over of knowledge across other distros (arch/fedora/centos). And this “hobbyist-level” knowledge has helped me multiple times at my work. But Nix is very different in the way we configure a system compared to the norm.
My fear is that not only do I have to throw away chunks of my existing Linux know-how, but the new Nix-way will interfere with what I currently know and require at my job. Is there some truth behind my thinking or am I just being a bit paranoid? Fresh and veteran Nix users, please help.
Yes, I didn’t explain that very well. I meant that I learnt a lot because sometimes you want to go a bit further than what the nix config let you do so you end up reading what the module actually do to figure out what to override. So I’ve learnt a lot about Linux reading and then writing derivations and modules.