Deepin nix vs nix os deepin

What is the difference between deepin (distro) with nix package manager and nixos with deepin interface?

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This is something of a difficult question to answer but since nobody has answered for the last 12 hours, I will give it a shot.

For the most part, the deepin UI is the deepin UI so what you are really asking is what is the difference between debian and nixos. The answer is “quite a lot”

When you use nix on debian/deepin there are a number of things you may be doing:

  • Using it to install packages
  • Using it in a variety of ways for development/devops
  • Using it to access packages for which the dependencies would make installing it your distribution difficult

Ultimately, you are still running debian/deepin and you still have a fairly standard Linux distro underpinning your system. You have a nix store inside a normal system.

When you use nixos, you are using nix to manage not only the software you are using but the system itself. Almost the entire system becomes immutable and reproducible.

Thinking of nix as a package manager doesn’t really convey what it is. While it can certainly be used to install packages, it is much more than that.

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