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The original was posted on /r/nixos by /u/EL_Sargo on 2023-10-05 01:46:21.

It seems like every 15s someone online shills this new tool that “solves all your” problems, and every time I just think: “or you could just use nix”.

Like OMG distrobox is so hecking cool because muh libraries, I can get arch packages on Debian stable. Like nixpkgs pretty much has all of debain + arch + AUR + whatever tf else and works WITHOUT any additional setup, dependency issues and can be stable and rolling at the same time.

Oh every one should use this immutable distro because it doesn’t break all the time and you can roll back the system. NixOS has had that over a decade ago, and doesn’t duplicate data shared between the would be images. It is also far more minimal than most images and distros because it only pulls the derivations that are actually required. Like what is the more sane option, put just about every thing in it’s own container or set $PATH per program. It does my head in.

NixOS is terrible!!! because the hecking config file. It’s literally AUTO GENERATED when you install. And I would argue that in most cases nix’s declarative config is 10x easier than than whats offered on other distros. NVIDIA drivers, copy paste one line into your config. Binfmt, one line. I want gnome with pipewire and sddm. Just enable those options and your good to go. In my experience doing that kind of thing on other distros is tedious at best or their hodge podge scripts don’t even work at worst. And once you’ve done that you’re able to reproduce your system down to the most intricate detail, even on different architectures and various hardware configurations. And when you mess up, it just gives you an error instead of borking your system.

And even if you do something retarded, you can just reboot and go back to the previous generation. And speaking of previous generations, OMG btrfs makes my terrible package manager not break all the time. How about using a system that doesn’t break things by default. I love arch it doesn’t break all the time like people say. Until you use a single AUR package. Think about how many times you’ve heard the phrase “reinstall arch”. I’ve experimented with my NixOS install 10x more than anything else and not once was I thinking “what if I break something”. Trying custom kernels, weird system components, modules and whatever else won’t brick your computer. EVER.

Oh but my distro is reproducible because you can make images… WHO TF is making a 200Gb iso, putting that on a usb stick and installing that onto their other system??? NO ONE. And the number of people I’ve heard who say, oh but my distro just works bla bla bla, and yet they have a 500 line install script that breaks on every update.

But you know what you can’t do on NixOS??? Download and run random raw binaries off sus websites. First of all that’s not true, look at steam-run. But more so how many programs are:

  • Not in nixpkgs
  • Not available as a flatpak
  • Not available as an appimage
  • Don’t have a flake in their repo
  • Don’t run in the browser (basically every electron app and now even Photoshop)

Like oh-no if only everything you could ever need were in nixpkgs and flathub. If you need to download random tarballs, your distro is broken.

And that’s not to mention all the other nix features like

  • nix run, shell, profile
  • flakes.
  • Sane reproducible Dev environments that handle ALL dependencies,
  • direnv + nix
  • multiple profiles and config using flakes,
  • not having to learn dozens of config formats for system config and other programs thanks to home manager
  • having a version controlled record of all changes made to the system
  • and so much more…

But I don’t know maybe I’m wrong and NixOS is actually terrible after all.