I didn't get it either, but this video does a pretty good job explaining why it's different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMQWirkx5EY
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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(also 6000 packages intalled on my system for some reason lol)
Well, Nix has a very liberal definition of a "package". Your web browser, its wrapper script, a service file, a config file; those are all technically "packages" (or "derivation" as Nix calls them).
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People love Nix because of the OS configuration based around a single config file. Essentially, you define your system configuration in this file, including installed programs, then you rebuild your system based on that configuration.
The beauty here is that you can easily move this file to another machine running NixOS and reproduce your configuration there. You can also roll back changes by simply rebooting and choosing the last known good build and you're back in business.
NixOS is a fully declarative and reproducable system.
What this means is that you can create a single configuration.nix, which includes all of your applications, settings, aliases, environment variables, user account + groups, etc., and copy that over to another NixOS machine (including different architectures) and run nixos-rebuild boot to completely reproduce the system on that other machine.
The nix package manager is also really good at telling you if the configuration will break anything, where, and how, and refuses to apply until the issue is fixed.
Also every time you use nixos-rebuild, it creates a new generation of your NixOS install meaning if something ends up breaking, you can reboot into the old system.
So for example, I can theoretically have the exact same configuration across my desktop, laptop, phone, server, etc., minus the automatically generated hardware-configuration.nix, which is specific to the hardware.
Also Nix supports package overlays, which means that you can modify an existing package while the maintainer still keeps it up to date.
Oh boy my two cents time!
I love the concept of NixOS. A fully declarative , reproduceable system from a single config repo! Sounds theoretically like it would be my kind of thing.
Sure, theoretically, I could have a fully reproduceable system. The time spent declaring that fully reproduceable system though... I remember the first time I was trying to get my usual disk setup of, a luks encrypted btrfs partition with multi-factor enabled decryption/authentication.
On a normal install it would take like a day at worse to install your distro. My first attempt with NixOS took me almost 4 days of screwing around in configs. 2 of those days were probably cumulatively spent waiting for the config option list of the nixos manual to search for text. And the number of redundant config options which all do the same thing! Or, are supposed to all do the same thing but in actuality, only one of them does the thing they are supposed to.
I really want to love NixOS but it always ends up feeling like an exercise in my patience and time to do even the simplest of things. As such I find myself asking the question of, am I going to spend so much time reinstalling my distro that it's ever worth this initial investment?
Anyways, rant over. I actually have been debating switching back over for another try again myself I just have some very frustrating memories of my first attempts with the distro.
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I switched around one and a half years ago. I must say, there are some hurdles to using NixOS. Mainly I dislike that it always takes around 20 times the effort to start and project. You make up for the initial time investment, because you end up with a far more stable setup, but still it does take some willpower to get things started.
I'm using Void Linux and see no reason to move over to NixOS. The concept seems cool though.
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because it's good as hell and i don't want to have to spend time having to rebuild and reconfigure fresh OS installs or risk breakage when I could just use a config file that I know already works