6 ms·

I have been thinking about switching to NixOS because of the great things I keep hearing about it. I would enjoy reading reviews from HNers, has anyone used it

by r0naa 11y ago

I have been thinking about switching to NixOS because of the great things I keep hearing about it. I would enjoy reading reviews from HNers, has anyone used it as a desktop?

tormeh 11y ago
Didn't even install for me. It's for tinkerers currently, I think. I basically wanted an Ubuntu that didn't deteriorate with time, so I guess I'm not the target audience.
- sergiosgc 11y ago
  Looking for an ubuntu that didn't deteriorate, I switched to debian sid two years ago. Sid is a rolling distribution, so there are no releases. It's not that it does not deteriorate. Instead, it deteriorates at a rate that allows me to fix things as they break. Mind you, I used Gentoo for many years before ubuntu, so I'm used to rolling breakage. Sid is a lot more stable than Gentoo (circa 2010)
  - tormeh 11y ago
    That's interesting. If I never fixed anything, how often would I need to reinstall? I'm currently considering turning off updates on Ubuntu and just reinstalling every time there's a new release. I'll probably switch to Windows, though, as I don't expect to code much on my home computers now that I'm no longer a student. Coding on windows is hell and the DE sucks, but windows is stable and has a lots of software available.
    - ossreality 11y ago
      Why the fu ck would you do that?
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
      I use Debian stable, dist-upgrading only a few weeks after each release. Kernel modules are the main things that deteriorate, mostly the GPU support. It's normally a matter of changing the kernel version (I freeze the kernel every time I remember about it) or removing some old package that isn't permitting a clean upgrade. Last time I reinstalled a desktop was in 2007 (I had 3, now I only have 2), because a Windows machine got a virus at the same LAN, and I wanted to be sure it didn't get anywhere. Last time I reinstalled a laptop was during the setup of my new one, this year, because I got a pretty messed-up set of kernel packages, and decided it were easier to just start from scratch.
    - sergiosgc 11y ago
      No idea. The thought of having something break, and not fixing it immediately, escapes me. A properly maintained Linux install goes down with the hardware. It was like that with Gentoo and my Thinkpad R40, then the X61T used various installs of Ubuntu, and now the X1 Carbon has the same sid install for a couple of years, and it will last a couple of years more. Ubuntu solemnly annoyed me by botching every upgrade and forcing me to reinstall every half-year. It was window-esque...
xiaomai 11y ago
Nix is awesome. The last time I ran it stuff like gnome-shell wasn't packaged, which made it hard to use for a desktop (they did have a number of window managers packaged though). That's the hardest part about nix right now (the lack of packaged software). It is pretty easy to write your own packages for basic software though (and the Nix project is good about taking pull requests). Looks like gnome3 is packaged now, I'll have to give it another shot: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/services/x11/desktop-managers/gnome3.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/s...
yellowapple 11y ago
I ran a NixOS desktop VM for a little while to familiarize myself with it and eventually be able to tackle learning the server side of things. It's very different from a normal GNU/Linux, that's for sure.
ebzzry 11y ago
We're using it for servers, laptops, and desktops. I'm using NixOS now on bare metal to compose this message. The system is built like a rock. And oh, managing just a single text file to configure everything is a big plus. I highly recommend it. :-)
- corobo 11y ago
  > just a single text file to configure everything is a big plus What ever happened to Linux folks mocking Windows' registry from back in the day :)
  - ebzzry 11y ago
    Heh. At least, we don't have to have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) anymore navigating down the registry tree. It's a completely different story though, if one is going to edit the complete .reg dump, and import the settings from there.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    The windows registry is a tad more complex. It's funny a while back Arch main selling point was single point of .. config too. Now it's systemd fine grained graph of .service. But nix being built by language designers, I guess abstraction and reuse will stay baked in.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    They recreated it 20 times over in the name of modernity.
davidrusu 11y ago
NixOS is really nice, what I enjoy most about it is it gives you the tools to be explicit about the state of your system. We know that implicit state and mutation are terrible in the programming world why not extend that philosophy to your entire OS? You might be missing some packages so make sure to check this: http://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html http://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html before installing. It's still early for NixOS, the OS is solid but it's likely you'll need to package up a program or two (but it's not difficult)
- imsofuture 11y ago
  Yep, I echo this experience. It is my main desktop OS, I am very happy with it. Myself + another developer at my company both use it, and it's starting to gain interest from others, seeing as it's mostly a panacea to all sorts of environment and configuration issues. I was pretty unhappy learning how to write the strange config language at first, but I've made my peace with it. You will almost certainly need to write a package or two, but there's a lot of active development to learn from, and lots of example to cargo cult.
  - bdimcheff 11y ago
    Other developer here. I've been running nixos as my main OS since about November after running Funtoo for a year or so before that. My tolerance for hacking on my distro is maybe slightly above average. ;) On the cool side: Nix is the first linux distro I've contributed to, because it's the standard "hack, fork, pull request" process that most github-hosted open source projects use these days. The biggest thing is that you absolutely have to drink the nix koolaid if you're going to run nixos. You can't really do the normal ./configure && make && make install, because paths to libraries are all non-standard. But once it all really clicks, it's pretty great. As far as desktop goes, the rest of this thread rings true for me too: most of the important things are there, like desktop environments, window managers, browsers, etc. There are occasionally niche/older packages that are not available. If you're willing to learn a little bit of nix language, it's relatively straightforward to add most packages.
chriswarbo 11y ago
I've been using it for nearly a year. One comment I'd make is that learning the nix package language will make life much easier. I've written a few thoughts about nix at http://chriswarbo.net/essays/nixos/ http://chriswarbo.net/essays/nixos/
gosub 11y ago
I've tried to install NixOS on an old laptop, for a minimal installation, there were some things I did non like: * Default packages are compiled with all the dependencies * The configuration language is a functional programming language, and that's a plus, but the syntax is quiet weird, not similar to ML, Haskell nor Lisp. * some command line tools are cryptic at best, for example searching for available packages is done with nix-env -qa \* -P | fgrep -i "$1"
josteink 11y ago
Getting it running on actual iron took more effort than I expected, but lately distros like Ubuntu has spoiled the linux-crowd. The hardest part about going all in is of you find some of the software you rely on not being packaged. There's just no way to "cheat" and ./configure && make'ing for way around: you have to learn the Nix language and package the software yourself. (Which can arguably be said to be a viral feature for getting more software packaged) To me this was too much work to fit in an otherwise busy weekend and I just had to give up. Had I had more time to do things properly, I would probably have stuck with it. The concepts it introduces are quite nice and well executed.

by r0naa 11y ago

I have been thinking about switching to NixOS because of the great things I keep hearing about it. I would enjoy reading reviews from HNers, has anyone used it as a desktop?

tormeh 11y ago

Didn't even install for me. It's for tinkerers currently, I think. I basically wanted an Ubuntu that didn't deteriorate with time, so I guess I'm not the target audience.

sergiosgc 11y ago
Looking for an ubuntu that didn't deteriorate, I switched to debian sid two years ago. Sid is a rolling distribution, so there are no releases. It's not that it does not deteriorate. Instead, it deteriorates at a rate that allows me to fix things as they break. Mind you, I used Gentoo for many years before ubuntu, so I'm used to rolling breakage. Sid is a lot more stable than Gentoo (circa 2010)
- tormeh 11y ago
  That's interesting. If I never fixed anything, how often would I need to reinstall? I'm currently considering turning off updates on Ubuntu and just reinstalling every time there's a new release. I'll probably switch to Windows, though, as I don't expect to code much on my home computers now that I'm no longer a student. Coding on windows is hell and the DE sucks, but windows is stable and has a lots of software available.
  - ossreality 11y ago
    Why the fu ck would you do that?
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    I use Debian stable, dist-upgrading only a few weeks after each release. Kernel modules are the main things that deteriorate, mostly the GPU support. It's normally a matter of changing the kernel version (I freeze the kernel every time I remember about it) or removing some old package that isn't permitting a clean upgrade. Last time I reinstalled a desktop was in 2007 (I had 3, now I only have 2), because a Windows machine got a virus at the same LAN, and I wanted to be sure it didn't get anywhere. Last time I reinstalled a laptop was during the setup of my new one, this year, because I got a pretty messed-up set of kernel packages, and decided it were easier to just start from scratch.
  - sergiosgc 11y ago
    No idea. The thought of having something break, and not fixing it immediately, escapes me. A properly maintained Linux install goes down with the hardware. It was like that with Gentoo and my Thinkpad R40, then the X61T used various installs of Ubuntu, and now the X1 Carbon has the same sid install for a couple of years, and it will last a couple of years more. Ubuntu solemnly annoyed me by botching every upgrade and forcing me to reinstall every half-year. It was window-esque...

xiaomai 11y ago

Nix is awesome. The last time I ran it stuff like gnome-shell wasn't packaged, which made it hard to use for a desktop (they did have a number of window managers packaged though). That's the hardest part about nix right now (the lack of packaged software). It is pretty easy to write your own packages for basic software though (and the Nix project is good about taking pull requests). Looks like gnome3 is packaged now, I'll have to give it another shot: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/services/x11/desktop-managers/gnome3.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/s...

yellowapple 11y ago

I ran a NixOS desktop VM for a little while to familiarize myself with it and eventually be able to tackle learning the server side of things. It's very different from a normal GNU/Linux, that's for sure.

ebzzry 11y ago

We're using it for servers, laptops, and desktops. I'm using NixOS now on bare metal to compose this message. The system is built like a rock. And oh, managing just a single text file to configure everything is a big plus. I highly recommend it. :-)

corobo 11y ago
> just a single text file to configure everything is a big plus What ever happened to Linux folks mocking Windows' registry from back in the day :)
- ebzzry 11y ago
  Heh. At least, we don't have to have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) anymore navigating down the registry tree. It's a completely different story though, if one is going to edit the complete .reg dump, and import the settings from there.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  The windows registry is a tad more complex. It's funny a while back Arch main selling point was single point of .. config too. Now it's systemd fine grained graph of .service. But nix being built by language designers, I guess abstraction and reuse will stay baked in.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  They recreated it 20 times over in the name of modernity.

davidrusu 11y ago

NixOS is really nice, what I enjoy most about it is it gives you the tools to be explicit about the state of your system. We know that implicit state and mutation are terrible in the programming world why not extend that philosophy to your entire OS? You might be missing some packages so make sure to check this: http://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html http://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html before installing. It's still early for NixOS, the OS is solid but it's likely you'll need to package up a program or two (but it's not difficult)

imsofuture 11y ago
Yep, I echo this experience. It is my main desktop OS, I am very happy with it. Myself + another developer at my company both use it, and it's starting to gain interest from others, seeing as it's mostly a panacea to all sorts of environment and configuration issues. I was pretty unhappy learning how to write the strange config language at first, but I've made my peace with it. You will almost certainly need to write a package or two, but there's a lot of active development to learn from, and lots of example to cargo cult.
- bdimcheff 11y ago
  Other developer here. I've been running nixos as my main OS since about November after running Funtoo for a year or so before that. My tolerance for hacking on my distro is maybe slightly above average. ;) On the cool side: Nix is the first linux distro I've contributed to, because it's the standard "hack, fork, pull request" process that most github-hosted open source projects use these days. The biggest thing is that you absolutely have to drink the nix koolaid if you're going to run nixos. You can't really do the normal ./configure && make && make install, because paths to libraries are all non-standard. But once it all really clicks, it's pretty great. As far as desktop goes, the rest of this thread rings true for me too: most of the important things are there, like desktop environments, window managers, browsers, etc. There are occasionally niche/older packages that are not available. If you're willing to learn a little bit of nix language, it's relatively straightforward to add most packages.

chriswarbo 11y ago

I've been using it for nearly a year. One comment I'd make is that learning the nix package language will make life much easier. I've written a few thoughts about nix at http://chriswarbo.net/essays/nixos/ http://chriswarbo.net/essays/nixos/

gosub 11y ago

I've tried to install NixOS on an old laptop, for a minimal installation, there were some things I did non like: * Default packages are compiled with all the dependencies * The configuration language is a functional programming language, and that's a plus, but the syntax is quiet weird, not similar to ML, Haskell nor Lisp. * some command line tools are cryptic at best, for example searching for available packages is done with nix-env -qa \* -P | fgrep -i "$1"

josteink 11y ago

Getting it running on actual iron took more effort than I expected, but lately distros like Ubuntu has spoiled the linux-crowd. The hardest part about going all in is of you find some of the software you rely on not being packaged. There's just no way to "cheat" and ./configure && make'ing for way around: you have to learn the Nix language and package the software yourself. (Which can arguably be said to be a viral feature for getting more software packaged) To me this was too much work to fit in an otherwise busy weekend and I just had to give up. Had I had more time to do things properly, I would probably have stuck with it. The concepts it introduces are quite nice and well executed.