Hi all,
I’ve been using NixOS for a while now (About a month now) and I’ve been loving it, but I’ve had some thoughts lately.
I understand that Nix(OS)'s claim to fame is the fact that packages are reproducible. All dependencies are versioned and all packages are rollback-able (although not sandboxed). With proper maintenance (nix-collect-garbage mostly), the problem with space is mostly mitigated.
But what if a package’s dependencies are out of date? These just stay out of date with their possible security problems as well. Not just that but it’s (nearly) impossible to actually do your own manual imperative editing of packages to solve a quick problem since everything is declarative.
Not just this, but Nix uses mostly its own configuration methodology, so isn’t this a maintenance nightmare as config files change and options are added/removed? Home manager is a prime example of this potential problem.
Plus more technologies being introduced on top of it to solve problems that seem already solved? (Flakes mostly come to mind).
I have come to the realiziation that, unlike a traditional distro like Arch/Alpine which I used previously, if maintenance dies I cannot feasibly maintain it myself, since it’s mostly “magic”. The upkeep of all the configurations plus all the dependency packages, and making sure each package compiles and matches the build configuration is a nightmare. I can barely do it with my own personal projects.
Anyways that’s kinda it just expressing thoughts about it. I do love Nix(OS) and plan to continue using it. It’s amazing, and its capabilities are matched by few to none, and from a user perspective it is an extremely seamless and simple OS. It’s mostly from a maintainer perspective that I had.
Ooh if you’re thinking of trying something new I recommend Alpine. An extremely underrated distro for a DIYer. It’s really lightweight and simple and its packaging system is a breeze to write packages for (for things you’d usually use the AUR for, since there isn’t an equivalant for Alpine AFAIK). Void is also fun I ran that for a year. Keep in mind, I’m only talking fun. For a good distro that will Just Work™, Alpine is fine, but I think Arch wins on that front.
NixOS is a journey and I have the privelage of having two systems, one “Home” system running Arch that I use usually and my “Roaming” system which I run whatever and is what I take to class and stuff because usually I only use it to take notes meaning minimum requirement is “Be able to log into a tty so I can write a text file”. So being able to use that for NixOS has helped a lot, since if something goes wrong, I can just ssh into my “Home” machine to get work done.