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Why I love NixOS

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Re: Why I love NixOS

#161

Post by riquito »

Iron_Ninja5 wrote: post #159
alembic_fumes wrote: post #104

The author almost touches on the one more topic that I adore about Nix, but ends up just so missing it: NixOS is absolutely incredible for its ability to be configured through AI tooling. And I don't mean that it's better than other operating systems, I mean that it's the only game in town. I've been using Nix, both the package manager and the operating system, for years by now. I agree with all of the author's point…

This feels like a very high-tech solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Why involve an LLM to install Hyprland when "sudo dnf install hyprland" works fine? I feel like you're mistaking Nix being 'AI-ready' as a feature, when in reality, you're just forced to use an LLM because Nix is too annoying to manage manually.

I was looking at hyperland in Fedora this week. I wanted to try out the latest release (released two weeks ago give or take). It wasn't available yet (maybe it isn't still). That's ok, but I checked what would I have needed to do to build it myself, and I didn't want to mess with a bunch of dev dependencies I didn't really care about and that I would have forgotten, so I ended up not trying it

Re: Why I love NixOS

#162

Post by sharts »

gradstudent wrote: post #132

I tried NixOS a few months ago, when I had to choose a new OS for my laptop. On the one hand, it's great, as so many others here and TFA have attested. Declaratively specifying your system configuration and using snapshots to keep track of everything is a complete game-changer. Similarly great is the absolutely huge universe of installable packages. The coverage here is so much better than what's on offer from Ubuntu…

I’m surprised nobody has bothered improving at least the documentation with a few LLM iterations.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#163

Post by wasting_time »

Iron_Ninja5 wrote: post #159
alembic_fumes wrote: post #104

The author almost touches on the one more topic that I adore about Nix, but ends up just so missing it: NixOS is absolutely incredible for its ability to be configured through AI tooling. And I don't mean that it's better than other operating systems, I mean that it's the only game in town. I've been using Nix, both the package manager and the operating system, for years by now. I agree with all of the author's point…

This feels like a very high-tech solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Why involve an LLM to install Hyprland when "sudo dnf install hyprland" works fine? I feel like you're mistaking Nix being 'AI-ready' as a feature, when in reality, you're just forced to use an LLM because Nix is too annoying to manage manually.

The key point is that all such tweaks to the system is managed in a one configuration file. While installing Hyprland may be a one-liner, configuring it and all other services from a single entry point is incredibly liberating.

Reverting changes are guaranteed to not leave behind any cruft, and you don't have to remember what you changed to make X or Y work: it's all visible in the (usually version controlled) system configuration.

Got a new computer? Just copy the configuration and enjoy a bit-identical system in seconds. Have an LLM tweak it and see the changes in the form of git diffs.

Sure, you can do the same with Silverblue and writing Ansible for everything, but it's not free of side effects (unlike Nix).

Re: Why I love NixOS

#164

Post by Phlebsy »

Iron_Ninja5 wrote: post #159
alembic_fumes wrote: post #104

The author almost touches on the one more topic that I adore about Nix, but ends up just so missing it: NixOS is absolutely incredible for its ability to be configured through AI tooling. And I don't mean that it's better than other operating systems, I mean that it's the only game in town. I've been using Nix, both the package manager and the operating system, for years by now. I agree with all of the author's point…

This feels like a very high-tech solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Why involve an LLM to install Hyprland when "sudo dnf install hyprland" works fine? I feel like you're mistaking Nix being 'AI-ready' as a feature, when in reality, you're just forced to use an LLM because Nix is too annoying to manage manually.

The problem that exists is that you cannot just willy nilly try out entirely different desktop envs/window managers/audio frameworks on an existing install of any other distro and be certain everything will work exactly as it was when you remove it. Especially as an only moderately knowledgeable user that won't know every single piece of config that needs to be changed back. Unless you're trying everything new out on a fresh install then there's a big risk.

NixOS gives you that just by opting in to using it, and while AI also speeds up config changes and translating your existing knowledge to a new tool you're trialing in other distros as well it really shines with NixOS where you don't even have to care what it messes up while you're trying something new. You just revert and you know that nothing that was done to configure that new thing - which likely would have broken your existing configuration on other distros - has persisted.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#165

Post by wasting_time »

riquito wrote: post #161
Iron_Ninja5 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a very high-tech solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Why involve an LLM to install Hyprland when "sudo dnf install hyprland" works fine? I feel like you're mistaking Nix being 'AI-ready' as a feature, when in reality, you're just forced to use an LLM because Nix is too annoying to manage manually.

I was looking at hyperland in Fedora this week. I wanted to try out the latest release (released two weeks ago give or take). It wasn't available yet (maybe it isn't still). That's ok, but I checked what would I have needed to do to build it myself, and I didn't want to mess with a bunch of dev dependencies I didn't really care about and that I would have forgotten, so I ended up not trying it

You can just install Nix on Fedora and grab it from there.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#166

Post by jama211 »

Iron_Ninja5 wrote: post #159
alembic_fumes wrote: post #104

The author almost touches on the one more topic that I adore about Nix, but ends up just so missing it: NixOS is absolutely incredible for its ability to be configured through AI tooling. And I don't mean that it's better than other operating systems, I mean that it's the only game in town. I've been using Nix, both the package manager and the operating system, for years by now. I agree with all of the author's point…

This feels like a very high-tech solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Why involve an LLM to install Hyprland when "sudo dnf install hyprland" works fine? I feel like you're mistaking Nix being 'AI-ready' as a feature, when in reality, you're just forced to use an LLM because Nix is too annoying to manage manually.

I think they just mean that the fat that they can do it this way says a lot about the os. No need to get into the weeds on exactly how to install hyprland. It was an example.

People who get bogged down by the details of examples/analogies are usually missing the point of why people use examples/analogies.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#167

Post by smrq »

gradstudent wrote: post #132

I tried NixOS a few months ago, when I had to choose a new OS for my laptop. On the one hand, it's great, as so many others here and TFA have attested. Declaratively specifying your system configuration and using snapshots to keep track of everything is a complete game-changer. Similarly great is the absolutely huge universe of installable packages. The coverage here is so much better than what's on offer from Ubuntu…

The most NixOS comment I've seen yet was when I was trying to find out about `mkOutOfStoreSymlink`, which lead me to this thread:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/how-to-manage-dotfiles-with-ho...

> Hi, I just wanted to know, where can I find the documentation to know more about this contrib.lib.file.mkOutOfStoreSymlink option ?

> Well, since is a very simple function, no documentation is really needed.

I've been gradually transitioning everything to NixOS, starting with my homelab mini PC, then my Framework laptop, and now my daily driver desktop. It's hard to imagine going back because the pros are so strong compared to the cons, but the docs situation is truly dire.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#168

Post by michaelmrose »

Phlebsy wrote: post #164
Iron_Ninja5 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a very high-tech solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Why involve an LLM to install Hyprland when "sudo dnf install hyprland" works fine? I feel like you're mistaking Nix being 'AI-ready' as a feature, when in reality, you're just forced to use an LLM because Nix is too annoying to manage manually.

The problem that exists is that you cannot just willy nilly try out entirely different desktop envs/window managers/audio frameworks on an existing install of any other distro and be certain everything will work exactly as it was when you remove it. Especially as an only moderately knowledgeable user that won't know every single piece of config that needs to be changed back. Unless you're trying everything new out on…

Actually desktop environments are entirely modular and even audio stacks are just a few packages and enabling a few services

Re: Why I love NixOS

#169

Post by et1337 »

ocimbote wrote: post #71

I tried NixOS and failed miserably. I've pointed at to the Fedora Atomic distros, which are also immutable, and apparently incomparably easier to setup. I'm tempted to give it a shot, with the extra bonus that I've never dabbed with a fedora-based distro.

I’ve been driving Bluefin DX for a year or two. On the plus side, it works absolutely flawlessly. This is the longest I’ve ever run a Linux distro without a Nvidia driver update causing the whole thing to explode. It truly is the year of Linux on the desktop.

But I can’t say I recommend it for dev work. It wants you to do everything inside devcontainers, which I like in theory but in practice come with so many annoyances. It wants you to install Flatpaks but Flathub is pretty sparse. I ended up downloading raw Linux binaries into my home directory (which actually works surprisingly well. Maybe this is the future, hah)

I think next time I’ll just go with vanilla Fedora.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#170

Post by sidkshatriya »

Phlebsy wrote: post #164
Iron_Ninja5 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a very high-tech solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Why involve an LLM to install Hyprland when "sudo dnf install hyprland" works fine? I feel like you're mistaking Nix being 'AI-ready' as a feature, when in reality, you're just forced to use an LLM because Nix is too annoying to manage manually.

The problem that exists is that you cannot just willy nilly try out entirely different desktop envs/window managers/audio frameworks on an existing install of any other distro and be certain everything will work exactly as it was when you remove it. Especially as an only moderately knowledgeable user that won't know every single piece of config that needs to be changed back. Unless you're trying everything new out on…

Here is a simple workflow with mutable systems like Fedora that I think a lot of people are missing. AI could be brought into this workflow also for those who want that:

(1) Take a snapshot of your current system (snapper+btrfs on Linux, bectl on FreeBSD+ZFS)

(2) Make destructive changes like install a new windows manager, some drivers etc.

(3) If everything worked out well, continue

(4) If something failed badly, restore from (1) using the snapshot restore -- Your system is as good as before

This workflow replicates many of the benefits of NixOS without the complex nix scripting that can be often needed.

Of course, a declarative and textual rendition of the configuration is better than bash commands entered on the command line but sometimes you don't need that level of precision.

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