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NixOS - A brief review

#project
May 18, 2024 -- 2 min read
NixOS neofetch screenshot
NixOS neofetch screenshot

So, I recently picked up a Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 6 and I decided to try out NixOS. And this is a short one on my experience using NixOS.

NixOS is amazing and likely the best linux distro I’ve ever used. And here are the pros and cons:

The pros:

  • Declarative builds - define what you want and rebuild, its that simple
  • Reproduceable - with flakes builds are not just repeatable (think Docker) but also reproduceable
  • Nix the programming language - a readable functional programming language
  • Nixpkgs packages - a large repo with more packages than the Arch AUR
  • Nix generations - roll back to a previous system version. Never will a system update break things
  • Nix shell - very useful for quickly checking or testing a package or app
  • Nix flakes - a powerful way to compose a system, multiple systems or a dev environment
  • A growing nix community and appreciation for nix

The cons:

  • Non-FHS compatible - nix stores things in different places which often means you can’t download any binary or app and expect it to work
  • Increased storage space - the roll back feature means previous package versions are kept on the system
  • Cryptic error messages - rebuilding your system is not always so straightforward when errors can not be found
  • Complexities of declarative abstractions - some modules can only be fully understood by looking at how it is built in the nixpkgs or home-manager repo
  • Inadequate documentation - there is a new wiki but generally the documentation is lacking or geared towards an experienced linux user. The Arch wiki is still the GOAT

NixOS with the Hyprland desktop has been a joy to use and I have gained a lot of knowledge along the way. I also made my first contribution to the home-manager repo. See the resources below that helped me get started: