Targeted users / context

[CrashDump]

Hello,

I daily use Archlinux as an OS. I am the single user on my machine / personal computer.

I wish to know if the adventure (switching to NixOS) is worth taking ?

What are the relevant questions to consider in order to answer this question ?

In case it’s worth it what are good resources out there ? Is the wiki a good resource ?

Thank you very much in advance for any help.

[jficz]

Just two quick things:

I wish to know if the adventure (switching to NixOS) is worth taking ?

Absolutely. Did the switch ~7y ago and I’d never go back. But I sort of had to force myself to do that - that is, I kept Arch dual boot for a while and whenever I needed something “to work”, I booted back to it, but this was rather detrimental as I found myself booting to it quite often. By happy accident, I got a new laptop a few weeks in and I started fresh with NixOS on it, no dual boot. My Nix-fu skyrocketed at that point.

In case it’s worth it what are good resources out there ? Is the wiki 2 a good resource ?

Depends. This wiki is unofficial. I don’t like it because it blocks access from VPNs but ymmv. Many things are on wiki.nixos.org, but you’ll need to look out for other sources as well - nix-pills is a good start. Also I highly recommend starting with Flakes out of the box - took me many years to finally switch to flakes but it was worth it.

One “relevant” question might be gaming. NixOS is good for gaming but my gaming rig still runs Arch - mostly because I’m lazy tho, however, it takes a bit more work to make games work on NixOS. Paradoxically, Wine-based games are easier than native ports but I had a lot of success with nix-alien.

[waffle8946]

This gets asked with some frequency on this forum.
Also, don’t use nix-env, and don’t put libraries in your environment.systemPackages and expect them to work. Use the options search (NixOS Search) and prefer those instead of packages (which don’t include config) wherever possible. This is where a “package” in pacman differs from a “package” in nix.

Some other context below. Of course you pick what you want to learn first.

Can I use NixOS without being able to code?

NixOS is an OS that uses code written in the nix language to configure the system. You can always ask here for help if you’re stuck, but if you’re unwilling or unable to learn, NixOS is not the distro to use. You don’t necessarily need prerequisite knowledge, but you need some preseverance in that case, and it’s hard for strangers to tell you whether it’s worth it for you. But step 1 is: forget the wiki, just ask here if you need help. That probably is the source of frustration. And keep anoth…

Learning Nix to contribute back

I disagree, the nixpkgs manual is a must, but some documentation will also be in READMEs in the repo, and some best practices are outlined at https://nix.dev/ as well - you’ll want to get somewhat familiar with callPackage. But the docs, generally, are there, even if the formatting could be improved or so on. (And if you see some opportunity for improvement feel free to send a PR.) Not really, I’ve sent about 200 PRs to nixpkgs and I don’t know jack about the tools in the python, rust, etc. e…

[CrashDump]

Thank you for your quick response.

Depends. This wiki is unofficial

Oh I didn’t know that. Thank you for this.

Also I highly recommend starting with Flakes out of the box.

Thanks for the advice.

One “relevant” question might be gaming. NixOS is good for gaming but my gaming rig still runs Arch - mostly because I’m lazy tho, however, it takes a bit more work to make games work on NixOS. Paradoxically, Wine-based games are easier than native ports but I had a lot of success with nix-alien .

I don’t play so it answers it quite quickly.

Thank you for your time.

[CrashDump]

Thank you for your quick response.

This gets asked with some frequency on this forum.

Sorry for this, didn’t wish to pollute the forum.

Also, don’t use nix-env , and don’t put libraries in your environment.systemPackages and expect them to work. Use the options search (NixOS Search) and prefer those instead of packages (which don’t include config) wherever possible. This is where a “package” in pacman differs from a “package” in nix.

Thank you for this. I’ll take a look at it. But if I don’t use nix-env nor environment.systemPackages I suppose you’ve got something else in mind ?

Thank you for your time