E.g. kernel updates requiring updates to various system packages is a legitimate issue of Nix OS. It's because upgrading the kernel also upgrades the kernel hea

E.g. kernel updates requiring updates to various system packages is a legitimate issue of Nix OS. It's because upgrading the kernel also upgrades the kernel headers, and a lot of stuff uses those. I think on other distros they just compile packages with older header versions and there is no problem. Linux headers and header updates are also decoupled from kernel packages in NixOS: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/os-specific/linux/kernel-headers/default.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/os-specifi... If they weren't, picking another kernel version or updating a kernel would virtually replace all packages, since the headers are used by glibc. I fully agree with the system requirements point, and have to add that keeping a system up to date creates a lot of network and hard disk movement compared to other distros. Downloading and deleting multiple gigabytes per week is normal. If you run unstable. I have several servers that run the latest stable release. The updates are usually quite modest. Of course, it can happen that e.g. glibc needs a security fix and everything on top is updated. I can't agree with the criticism about the determinism. It seems he parades an obscure bug around. It's not perfect, so? It's way better than the alternatives. I had trouble following that point. The post first talks about determinism and then links to some issues that people had with fetchers?