NixOS: Declarative Builds and Deployments

I&#x27;ll be honest, the first few times I tried using Nix I just couldn&#x27;t get into. It was too complex for the benefits I was getting. But that was using Nix on another OS.<p>I recently switched to NixOS because I wanted what they were selling and the experience this time around was way better. Having no other option but to figure it out made me learn the essentials real quick (like an exchange program to a foreign country that speaks another language).<p>If you think about it, when you used Ubuntu or Fedora or RHEL for the first time, and probably for a very long time, you could get by without learning the deep intricacies of what is going on behind the scenes. The same is true with NixOS. The things you need to learn are different, but once you get a basic setup with home-manager setup you&#x27;re off to the races. (Btw, I used this &quot;book&quot; to get started and it was great: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world&#x2F;</a>)<p>The best part about using NixOS so far is that things <i>just work</i>. Setting up my graphics card was as simple setting enabled = true. Same for configuring specific audio frameworks. And I had tried many times to get Davinci Resolve working on other distros and always encountered issues leading me to need to dual-boot Windows so I could do video editing. Now I just enabled Davinci Resolve and it works! No more Windows.<p>If you&#x27;re brand new to linux on the desktop, I wouldn&#x27;t recommend it. But if you&#x27;ve been doing that for years, maybe try NixOS in 2024.

I have had a great experience using the Nix package manager on other Linux distros. It&#x27;s super easy to try out software with `nix-shell -p somepackage`. (It&#x27;s a little rockier on macOS.)<p>Another neat trick is reproducible shell scripts that use Nix to declare their dependencies in a sort of extended shebang line.

I think the idea is good but execution is poor to reach mass adoption because:<p>1. It tries to replace ALL package managers due its extreme philosophy. I had a lot of issues when it tries to replace Cargo for example<p>2. It uses a functional language, which will lose 95% of users<p>3. It never had a great user experience especially if you’re new and trying to learn or if you’re not using linux or if you bring your own tools (e.g. vscode)<p>I think something like that could totally exist one day, but it’ll have to restart from scratch on a cleaner base IMO

I work on Nix and think this paradigm has already impacted and will continue to influence software devopment in general. I want to make it easier for organizations&#x2F;companies&#x2F;groups to adopt it. Ideas and questions are welcome.

I like the idea of nixos. Having one file responsible for all packages installed on the system is way better than what traditional distro use. I just don&#x27;t like the quality of the packages. It would be nice if someone could do something like a os wide packages.json but for a mature packages repository like Debian.

I am not a (current) developer, though I have more dev experience than most laypeople. I have enough experience with languages to pick up a new one relatively easily but I’ve never done anything with a functional language. I installed NixOS after playing around with nix (the package manager) in Fedora.<p>1. While the WHAT of NixOS was obvious from the start, I have never had a more difficult time understanding HOW to get there with a piece of technology. The documentation is hilariously inconsistent.<p>2. I have also never encountered a more satisfying, useful, and time-saving piece of technology. I had a computer crash and it took me 15 minutes to be back to where I was on a completely different machine with about 2 commands.<p>3. Time-saving other than the vast learning curve anyway.<p>4. Unlike some tech projects, it’s not hard because it’s incomplete or poorly structured. It’s hard because it’s doing something different. (It’s arguable how different it is in 2024, but that’s a different conversation.)<p>5. To create my child’s account, I spent about 10 minutes editing a copy of my config to pick and choose the packages he needs, and it deployed (on the first go) in about 10 minutes, fully configured.<p>Projects like fleek that put a simplified face on nix are incredibly valuable, because they can unlock 65% of the benefit of the platform with almost zero effort. I can’t tell you if the time investment for the extra 35% is worth it for someone managing family computers, but, y’all, I spend less time fiddling with them now and they break less often. That’s a … plus?

NixOS is honestly the single most game-changing thing I&#x27;ve been introduced to in my last decade of experience in tech.<p>If you&#x27;re interested in trying out NixOS I highly recommend either running it as an WSL2 VM[1] if you have a Windows machine or deploying it on a cheap VPS[2] to play around with.<p>I personally still use a Win11 desktop for compat with Adobe software and a few other bits and pieces, but I do all my serious work on a NixOS WSL2 VM.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;LGUG2Z&#x2F;nixos-wsl-starter">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;LGUG2Z&#x2F;nixos-wsl-starter</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;LGUG2Z&#x2F;nixos-hetzner-cloud-starter">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;LGUG2Z&#x2F;nixos-hetzner-cloud-starter</a>

I first looked at nix-shell which you can use to create ephemeral environments just like Docker, with the difference that they are 100% reproducible and you don&#x27;t need containerd or like. It is awesome to create scripts which run the same on EVERY system.<p>Then looked at NixOS. I geht the point of having a deklarative like OS which you can rebuild in a couple of minutes, BUT the nix language is kind of unituitive and all the tools like flake and nix packages do some magic it con&#x27;t quiet understand. It does not help that the docs are kind of meh.

Honestly, I don’t really understand the advantages (or the point of) NixOS over something like Docker.