Okay, so hear me out…
My interest was piqued when I started knowing more and more about NixOS from the recent “I use NixOS btw” wave everywhere. The main selling point for me was the one config file to rule them all. I have always wanted something like that on Arch. And here it is with a dose of immutability, and extra stability in the form atomic updates and whatnot. You also had the option of turning it to a rolling release model; that’s awesome! What’s not to love then?
So, I kept reading even further about NixOS. I got to learn about how the Linux root structure is almost completely different. Building packages from the source follows a completely different procedure. Configuring anything in your system will rely on the main config file, instead of executing the standard terminal command, or editing their respective config file. The list goes on…
I understand that all of this is done by design. They are not flaws, per se. Rather the means to facilitate the philosophy that every NixOS user is after. However, that also does not mean it is inherently flawless in the grand scheme of the entire ecosystem. I personally love Linux, and would always want to grow with my knowledge in how I handle and get things done in it. Wouldn’t me disconnecting away from that, in favour of the NixOS’ arcane methods, just hurt my progression in my Linux learning journey?
This is a genuine question, of course. I have been thinking about this for a few days now, unsure of whether I should change course and get into it or not. I also do not have the time to use other distros aside from what I mainly install; I would be all in. So, what do you all think?
Well Linux isn’t an operating system, it’s a kernel. The difference is really just the design philosophy of the package manager. As someone very experienced with NixOs, people are starting to catch up with it, but it’s much more advanced than the docker kubernetes mess most developers end up working with.
More advanced in what way? (Excuse my ignorance)
It’s declarative, reproducible, has atomic rollbacks. Most of the compelling reasons to use Docker are just worse versions of what’s available with Nix. Its Dockerfiles are an attempt to make a declarative, layer-based description of the resulting operating system, but in a less rich way than Nix (which is a higher level of abstraction and has a stronger type system.)
Look at how easy it is to create containers with Nix: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_Containers
It’s basically a matter of changing
services.nginx.enable = true;tocontainers.my-container-name.services.nginx.enable = true;.
I’ve been using replit to host some small projects, it’s a real pain as replit is so heavily relied on nix packages.
Linux is a kernel. At the beginning, software, especially userland software mimicked Unix conventions. There is very little requiring that anything work the way it does, except for inertia and convention. As cloud native conventions gain steam, a lot of them are working their way backwards into things like Nix. Having spent some time working with things like K8s and Packet and cloud-init quite a bit, I welcome declarative instantiating and configuration at the OS level, at least for those use cases. Stuff like Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Salt etc have been the middleware between the legacy OS layer stuff and a declarative CM system, but they all have an absolute pile of complex scripts and tests to make sure that when you say “I want this package installed”, it knows how to do it correctly and safely on the target system. Using a leaner declarative model at the package level makes it a lot simpler to declare the desired state.
I am pretty bearish that it will ever see overwhelming adoption for desktop users, but I see it having a ton of relevance when you want to orchestrate a whole butt load of server instances
I don’t know if you’ve used Emacs, but NixOS almost feels to Linux how Doom Emacs is to GNU/Emacs. Not including all the benefits like reproducability, it feels like a reliable framework placed on top of Linux in the same was Doom Emacs is a framework on top of Emacs.
Doom to vanilla Emacs is closer to what Arco is to Arch. Gets you off the ground qucikly, has some opinionated configs, and lets you try out a bunch of stuff before moving to your own config. You still install and configure packages in almost the same way, but you might write package! instead of use-package. It’s still the same editor with the same goals.
Nix/guix have different goals than other distros, and so they do things a lot differently. That difference is usually the complete opposite of what Doom is trying to do as it makes the average person’s life harder and the expert’s easier in specific scenarios. For example:
You want to use a programming language with up to date libraries?
Normal distro: use the language’s package manager, install shit, get to work
Nix/Guix:
a) download the package from the repo, if it’s a year out of date, it’s time for you to learn how to write packages. Write a package for every library you need, and then maintain them
b) run your shell in a containerised environment that’s simulating fhs, pray that it actually works, and then slap your ide on top
A) is amazing for software companies because of reproducibility and precision, and because companies have enough devs that writing and maintaining packages is a minor investment unless you’re using Js. On the other hand, a random dude trying to code is going to have a much easier time using a one liner to install the newest version of the package directly from the language’s pm.
I don’t believe NixOS prevents you from using the standard terminal commands or editing config files. It hooks you up with a different set of tools, ones which are better in some respects, but it doesn’t force you to use them.
nix-env -iA is there for a reason, they recognize that sometimes perfection is the enemy of good #-#
From what I’ve heard from NixOS users, your intuition seems right. When you learn NixOS, you learn NixOS rather than Linux. The question is, what your goals are. If you want to get a job as a Linux sysadmin, you’d probably be better off using a more common distro. But if you just want to use Linux privately, dive into whatever seems most exciting to you or fulfills your needs the best.
When you learn NixOS, you learn NixOS rather than Linux.
That is exactly what I am talking about. You seem to have understood me the most. NixOS could be the unequivocally best distro ever. However, that does not change the fact that a big portion of your knowledge acquisition and experience gained from your time on NixOS, will be for NixOS alone.
I am obviously not putting the two on the same line, but mac shares a lot of terminal syntax and programs with Linux. They still remain vastly different. So, this is exactly what concerns me with the growth that I seek in the Linux ecosystem.
My question then would be: Why do you want to learn more about Linux in the first place?
I don’t mean to sound crass here, but the best answer I can give you is, “because I want to”. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I will pursue Linux professionally as a job. But who knows? I wouldn’t out-rule that.
It’s something that I am passionate about and enjoy using. Therefore, I will naturally want to grow my knowledge in.
I’ve heard NixOS is used on big scale deployments, and it is a well paid job it just won’t be easy
No disagreement there. There are companies that use NixOS. But I’d argue that the majority of paid Linux admins don’t manage NixOS systems but rather RHEL, Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSuse and others.
Yes, of course. NixOS is just a “nice to have” kind of thing.
Having been in a similar situation to you, I say go for it. Arch taught me the basics about Linux that I think everyone should know to understand what Nix does under the hood, but as soon as I saw how well NixOS worked on my secondary machine I switched my primary over and I’m not regretting it in the slightest.
That’s not to say Arch is a bad distro, in fact I’d say 99% of my Linux knowledge comes from that excellent community, it really is KISS, but it makes no secret out of what this actually means: making it simple for the maintainer by delivering an almost untouched upstream, which I agree brings the ecosystem forward as it pushes toward a bazaar model where everything works together without the distributor doing too much work of their own. But if you want to keep a system clean in the long run, at one point you realize that you need a system like Ansible (which for me retrospectively has shortcomings that can only be fixed in the underlying system) or Nix integrated in your base system, which NixOS does.
These are the kinds of comments that made me start researching NixOS in the first place. Damn it :D
I don’t think NixOS is used by many companies, so it’s not really a skill that will likely lead to employment. Most companies use containers and tools like ansible which is accomplishing something similar to nix.
NixOS is just a hobby, it’s good if you don’t have a GPU since you can’t play any games either way.
I was interested in NixOS until I saw no reference of a specific software I want. Literally not a single search result.
So, I guess its biggest flaw for me is that it cannot beat Arch Linux’s catalogue. So, maybe in a year I’ll check again.
