Nix is a build system, it builds things, it just happens to be an entire operating system too. Trying to write a ‘manual’ to nixos is like trying to describe every mistake and blunder… and ‘in hind sight this way was not great’… on how unix and associated tooling has evolved in it’s 50 year lifespan. The intrinsic problem with library paths, versioning, dynamic vs static binaries , configuration, ABI compatibility, file system layout… I’m astounded it works as well as it ‘seems’ to.
Every other distro out there follows the same unix paradigm, someone will write a ‘redhat package manager’ then ‘apt get with super cow powers’, and then another one, that apparently fixes those problems with <insert a distro your not using’> .
Packaging tools are one thing, but it’s not better with language build tools either, they all want to do there own thing, in their own way. I’ve forgotton how many ‘defacto’ build systems golang has gone thru.
Developers write code, and as the language might be well defined , how to assemble that software to make it ‘do some kind of job’… … no one can really decide how to ‘build’ software, so we get a mish mash of reimplementations of the same idea’s…but someone how those idea’s are ‘better’ … Nix seems the only thing that’s different , that i can run today. Should applications decide how to package and upgrade themselves, or is that the job of the operating system? Nix goes hardcore on the latter.
I wish i could write a nixos for dummies, but i don’t think it’s possible… because it’s not for dummies… it’s actually for people who care about building things from source and are busy people that can’t wait for gentoo to compile, and probably want to be able to build things not only today, but X years in the future. How you translate that to the ‘does it run on windows brigade’ , only god can help them now.
Nix has it’s work cut out for it to go mainstream…but just look as what people are doing with it…, if you going to ‘rebel’ against the ‘the way it’s always been done’ expect resistance…
Every critique of nix/nixos i’ve seen it basically ‘I don’t know functional programming works’ and 'This is not like <insert any other distro out thier (except guix 
) and i don’t understand it. ’
I guess you have to have seen the 35 years of unix evolution to appreciate the beauty of nix’s design… you gotta be pretty brave to rip up the rule book, reject the status quo , and refuse to ‘do what the others are doing’… to start again with a level of backwards compatibility that actually seems to work.
Lets hope a lot of devops and developers and everyone inbetween can get switched on to nix, this talk at nixcon this year was especially inspiring thanks Aden… https://youtu.be/7sQa04olUA0?t=20557
real world problems being solved with something… ‘new’?
We say ‘GNU’s not Unix, Nix is not (like) anything…’
so what does nix mean to me…
## nix
(nɪks)
*sentence substitute*
**1.** another word for [no](https://www.thefreedictionary.com/no)11
**2.** be careful! watch out!
*n*
**3.** a rejection or refusal
**4.** nothing at all
*vb*
( *tr* ) to veto, deny, reject, or forbid (plans, suggestions, etc)
[C18: from German, colloquial form of *nichts* nothing]