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Why I love NixOS

birkey.co

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Re: Why I love NixOS

#31

Post by foldr »

nehalem wrote: post #4

Although I’ve never committed to using nix system-wide, I do enjoy nix-based using https://devenv.sh/ for the very reasons described in the article. It’s much easier than local containers for development.

I've never really understood how version pinning is meant to work with devenv.sh or Nix more generally. If I whack a .tool-versions file in my repo, everyone who works on it can use install the exact same versions of the relevant tools using asdf. That's low tech and imperfect (and certainly not a replacement for all of Nix's features), but it works as far as it goes. None of the examples on the devenv.sh page demonstrate pinning of tools/packages to specific versions.

As best I can tell, Nix enthusiasts think that this is an XY problem and that I shouldn't want to pin individual tools/packages to arbitrary versions. But the thing is that I am a rude barbarian who very much does want to do this, however philosophically misguided it might be.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#32

Post by edent »

I'd love NixOS more if they had any decent documentation.

Everything seems scattered around a dozen forums, a hundred old blog posts, and a thousand issues of "this work on my machine (3 releases ago)".

Re: Why I love NixOS

#33

Post by jwiz »

Daunk wrote: post #11
soumyaskartha wrote: post #2

Most people who try Nix either quit in the first week or never go back to anything else. There is no in between.

What would the in between be?

Use it for a month or two and decide it's not for you.

That is in between "use it for very short period of time" and "use it forever"

Re: Why I love NixOS

#34

Post by bspammer »

quchen wrote: post #16

The idea is so good it’s as close to platonic as it gets. The user experience of writing your own nix expressions is so bad that it makes me angry every time I try. Not only that, but at some point the beginner help (!) meta became »use flakes, don’t do what the existing tutorials tell you, yes flakes are unstable beta and there are no tutorials but use it I beg you«. No, please, let me choose my own way to learn! I…

LLMs are a real gamechanger for Nix, highly recommend giving it a go again.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#35

Post by linsomniac »

quchen wrote: post #16

The idea is so good it’s as close to platonic as it gets. The user experience of writing your own nix expressions is so bad that it makes me angry every time I try. Not only that, but at some point the beginner help (!) meta became »use flakes, don’t do what the existing tutorials tell you, yes flakes are unstable beta and there are no tutorials but use it I beg you«. No, please, let me choose my own way to learn! I…

>I haven’t given it a shot in the LLM age

I haven't tried it in almost a year, but using Claude Code for setting up my nix config back then worked amazingly well. I've only dabbled in NixOS, and I'm very tempted to it for my workstation when I reinstall it in the next month.

Given how much Claude Code + Opus have improved in the last year, I'd give it a fighting chance to make a nice Nix config. I'll probably start setting up a spare laptop to get the base configs dialed in before switching over to it.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#36

Post by qiine »

BoredPositron wrote: post #27

The problem I have with nix is that I just don't need another hobby. Keeping everything up to date in an ever changing environment like an os just looks like chore. I install my system and image it every week and keep maybe the initial and a monthly snapshot. Why would nix be better in my case? Maybe I am missing something essential but I also don't bork my system that often tbh.

nixos updates tend to be a lot less eventful than others distro, in fact the way it largely prevent system borking when updating, is spiritually freeing.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#37

Post by hombre_fatal »

redrove wrote: post #30
dangirsh wrote: post #28

My love for NixOS really became clear when I realized I never have to write Nix again by hand. A WIP NixOS config for working with agents: https://github.com/dangirsh/tsurf

Same. I have a full homelab and multiple macs, can’t say I’ve written a line of real Nix code by hand. If you’re itching to try Nix, now is the time.

Same.

Can't imagine going back to the status quo where my system is the accumulation of terminal commands over time instead of a config file.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#38

Post by exe34 »

edent wrote: post #32

I'd love NixOS more if they had any decent documentation. Everything seems scattered around a dozen forums, a hundred old blog posts, and a thousand issues of "this work on my machine (3 releases ago)".

ChatGPT is very good at pulling it together to give you working code. Not on the first try, but on the third try it usually works.

Re: Why I love NixOS

#39

Post by hombre_fatal »

BoredPositron wrote: post #27

The problem I have with nix is that I just don't need another hobby. Keeping everything up to date in an ever changing environment like an os just looks like chore. I install my system and image it every week and keep maybe the initial and a monthly snapshot. Why would nix be better in my case? Maybe I am missing something essential but I also don't bork my system that often tbh.

Imo it's the opposite. Since the system is defined in config files, an AI agent can look at live system state/errors vs. the config file and do all the work of figuring out the issue.

Also, using higher level modules like home manager makes things more declarative and less fiddly since someone else is maintaining the lower level.

Maybe nix is a downgrade for what you do. But I loved nix so much that I also migrated to nix on macOS (nix-darwin). No more homebrew.

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