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 !
I didn’t get it either, but this video does a pretty good job explaining why it’s different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMQWirkx5EY
Here’s the straightforward version of why I use it:
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The entire state of your operating system is defined in a config file, and changes are made by changing the config file. This makes it super easy to reproduce your exact system many times and to know where all the many different configuration elements that describe your system are located.
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Updates are applied atomically, so you don’t have to worry about interrupting the update process and if it fails, the previous state of your system is still bootable. By default every time you change something, you get another option in the boot menu to roll back to.
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Making container-like sub systems is super easy when you’re familiar with nix, so you can have as many different enclaves as you like for different software versions, development environments, desktop setups, whatever without taking a performance hit. Old versions of stuff are very accessible without breaking your new stuff.
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The package manager has a lot of software and accessing nonfree stuff is straightforward. Guix looks rad, but nix ended up being the more practical compromise for my usecase. I didn’t want to have to package a heap of software the moment I made the switch.
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I used NixOS for a couple of years. My experience is like this:
- It is a rolling release (mostly)
- 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
- It is stable, and when it breaks it is easy to go back
- Packages are mostly bleeding edge
Note that there’s both the rolling unstable channel and a bi-annual stable release channel.
Important to note that NixOS has both a rolling release and point release version.
everyone
Now that’s what I’d call a stretch…
Indeed, why would I switch, already have been running NixOS for 10+ years.
I’ll edit. That was clearly a stretch
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
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.
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What about Nix’s financial issues? Have they been resolved yet?
To get it out of the way first: There are no financial issues. There are more than enough funds to continue operations as they are for a sufficiently long time.
What is actually happening is that a long time sponsor has indicated that they (understandably) no longer want to foot the huge bill of hosting the entire archive of binary caches ($9000/mo). Finding a more sustainable setup is what the community is currently concerned with.
There is no risk of operations shutting down any time soon, the NixOS foundation has funds set aside to continue even this unsustainable setup for at least a year. We just want to be more efficient with our and others resources going forwards.That’s what all this you might have heard of is about.
Btw, even if the binary cache were to go poof, we don’t technically need it. NixOS is a source-based distro like Gentoo and source hosting is not a concern. The binary cache is immensely helpful though which is why we’d obviously prefer to keep it.
I think AWS Gave them 12 months of free credit to host cache
Yes, AWS gracefully sponsored 12 months of our S3 bill which gives us even more time to enact change.
That’s just the short term resolution though, the Nix community is still looking into more sustainable long-term solutions.
$9,000/mo? Have you considered not using the most ridiculously expensive method possible?
the Nix community is still looking into more sustainable long-term solutions.
Thinking about this further…
I can purchase 10GE fiber, at home, for $299/mo.
I can purchase a solid 16 bay Supermixro server for around $5k
16TB drives are $168. There’s $3,700 left so let’s buy 21 drives (336TB, 235TB usable under raidz3 zfs). We’ll leave that last $170 for … electricity.
Leasing all of this from a regular hosting provider woul be much more cost effective. I work for one, what the heck are you doing man?
You aren’t a reputable public hoster with AWS-class uptime. That has a price too. AWS is likely overpriced though, hence the nix community still looking for better alternatives.
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.
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.
NixOS is not immutable in the way Fodora Silverblue is, and way more declarative and reproducible than Ansible. But yeah it is not something you “need”. Other distros work too, but NixOS is way more fun.
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.
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!
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.
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
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