Nix is the key ('Steamdeck as a desktop') [Video]

I recently stumbled upon this video, which was a pretty cool thing to see. Chris Titus is a sysadmin and network admin who now does YouTube part time. He got into desktop Linux a few years ago, and since then has made a ton of educational content on the subject.

Nix making its way onto channels like his is significant in my opinion. His audience includes a lot of Windows power users and new desktop Linux enthusiasts— the youngest among them likely to grow up to be part of the next generation of DevOps and software engineers.

His use case here is delightfully simple and practical, and reminds me of my own introduction to Nix: he just wants to get his favorite software onto a relatively restricted system in a safe way. You don’t have to be tuned into academic computer science language or have experienced years of pain with existing DevOps tools to understand why Nix is great for solving that problem.

I hope we see more introductions to Nix via painless, low commitment use cases like this one from content creators like him! And that as a community we are prepared to help new users who reach us through media like this to level up their skills and join us in making Nix do new tricks for us. :slight_smile:

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