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Might as well try out NixOS. I've been using it on all my personal devices for ~6 months and also for some bare metal sever deployments. A (mostly) immutable

Might as well try out NixOS. I've been using it on all my personal devices for ~6 months and also for some bare metal sever deployments. A (mostly) immutable system configured with a single config file is an absolute killer feature. The ability to roll back to a previous config in the bootloader or the terminal is brilliant. And home-manager [1] provides the same experience for your user environment. I also looked into Guix, but the community and package repository seem much smaller. They also don't accept proprietary software in the official package repo. Which is a respectable ideological choice, but really reduces usability a lot compared to nixpkgs. [1] https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager

rudolph9 6y ago
I’m on NixOS and had the same feeling when first debated which to use. If I was running some security sensitive app or scientific computing I would probably choose guix and they tend to be pretty rigid about reproducible building from source and signing changes to to the OS. But my day to day OS I use NixOS as I get tons of packages and basically all the same features with the trade-off of expecting some weird behavior on edge-cases and reproducibility (which I have yet to run into but know I will eventually)
peterburkimsher 6y ago
I tried to install NIX, but the graphical installer wouldn't boot. I'd have the option to choose it in GRUB, but it went to a command-line. Then when I tried the text-based install, it couldn't see my NVME disk.
- adkadskhj 6y ago
  Weird, i stumbled through NixOS, a dual boot grub setup, and backed by NVME with no issues and very little Linux information to start with. Currently on NixOS btw, been a great experience from it so far.
  - peterburkimsher 6y ago
    My SSD is an Intel 660P, if that helps debugging in any way. Installing using nixos-gnome-20.09.1889.58f9c4c7d3a-x86_64-linux.iso.
    - danieldk 6y ago
      I also have an Intel 660P, works fine with NixOS. It shows up as /dev/nvme0n1 .
- thomastjeffery 6y ago
  > I tried to install NIX, but the graphical installer wouldn't boot. I've had the same issue. Nix uses KDE Plasma by default, which uses a compositor that struggles with some video drivers. Fortunately, installing from command line is practically the same, especially if you do your partitioning beforehand. > Then when I tried the text-based install, it couldn't see my NVME disk. That's a more unique problem. I'm not sure what to do about it either. Did /dev/nvme0n1 just never populate? My best guess is that you booted emulated BIOS instead of UEFI.
mehrzad 6y ago
Like the other replier, I also found NixOS very difficult to install and my hardware wasn't supported as well as Debian was.
- soraminazuki 6y ago
  I suspect you have to enable some firmware or drivers through NixOS options: - https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-profile-all-hardware https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-profile-all-hardw... - https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nvidia https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nvidia - https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Accelerated_Video_Playback https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Accelerated_Video_Playback
Jenz 6y ago
I gave NixOS a serious try... the reason I gave it up was that pretty much all build systems for my own projects were broken and it was a pain to "nixify" them.

rudolph9 6y ago

I’m on NixOS and had the same feeling when first debated which to use. If I was running some security sensitive app or scientific computing I would probably choose guix and they tend to be pretty rigid about reproducible building from source and signing changes to to the OS. But my day to day OS I use NixOS as I get tons of packages and basically all the same features with the trade-off of expecting some weird behavior on edge-cases and reproducibility (which I have yet to run into but know I will eventually)

peterburkimsher 6y ago

I tried to install NIX, but the graphical installer wouldn't boot. I'd have the option to choose it in GRUB, but it went to a command-line. Then when I tried the text-based install, it couldn't see my NVME disk.

adkadskhj 6y ago
Weird, i stumbled through NixOS, a dual boot grub setup, and backed by NVME with no issues and very little Linux information to start with. Currently on NixOS btw, been a great experience from it so far.
- peterburkimsher 6y ago
  My SSD is an Intel 660P, if that helps debugging in any way. Installing using nixos-gnome-20.09.1889.58f9c4c7d3a-x86_64-linux.iso.
  - danieldk 6y ago
    I also have an Intel 660P, works fine with NixOS. It shows up as /dev/nvme0n1 .
thomastjeffery 6y ago
> I tried to install NIX, but the graphical installer wouldn't boot. I've had the same issue. Nix uses KDE Plasma by default, which uses a compositor that struggles with some video drivers. Fortunately, installing from command line is practically the same, especially if you do your partitioning beforehand. > Then when I tried the text-based install, it couldn't see my NVME disk. That's a more unique problem. I'm not sure what to do about it either. Did /dev/nvme0n1 just never populate? My best guess is that you booted emulated BIOS instead of UEFI.

mehrzad 6y ago

Like the other replier, I also found NixOS very difficult to install and my hardware wasn't supported as well as Debian was.

soraminazuki 6y ago
I suspect you have to enable some firmware or drivers through NixOS options: - https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-profile-all-hardware https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-profile-all-hardw... - https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nvidia https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nvidia - https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Accelerated_Video_Playback https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Accelerated_Video_Playback

Jenz 6y ago

I gave NixOS a serious try... the reason I gave it up was that pretty much all build systems for my own projects were broken and it was a pain to "nixify" them.