What is your reason for choosing NIX?
I’m asking out of pure curiosity as everyone has their reasons as to why they choose a specific Linux distro that meets their needs.
Welcome!
I’m just trying to be practical 
3 Likes
Now that’s pretty Awesome
1 Like
Are we ai-posting again 
feel I’ve seen this kind of thing a lot lately
1 Like
Then it’s bio would say “My name is Luka”, wouldn’t it ? Lol 90s kid here.
2 Likes
Sorry to hear that! I’m new to to the group and I was actually curious to peoples views. I know NIX isn’t exactly a popular choice right off the jump for those who choose and stick with a specific distro.
Lol, for me it was the 80’s and the 90’s!
ditto, proactively choosing was more leaning into the 90s here though.
1 Like
Regarding your post’s specifics: Trying to keep it as simple as possible, except for what you bring from your own domain can bring you very far quickly without losing your mind because you inherently documented what you did. Also it has a nice learn while doing loop so to say: once you memoized the safeguards, i.e., generations or garbage control, you can not to easily get lost.
2 Likes
But yes, feel very encouraged to try a few things and ask more specifics then.
1 Like
Like many, I know we all didn’t start with Nix as our first choice. I started with Mint and was off of that within a month. I jumped on Garuda Dragonized and was liking it for awhile but was still experimenting with other distros. I noticed a lot of distro’s that weren’t that much different from each other than their name and wallpapers, and color schemes. When I got into Nix, it was a bit intimidating at first just do to how it’s setup and it’s declarative. I hold to the Unix Philosophy quite a bit and Nix made more sense than the others I had tried.
Beware no guarantee that this is free from hot weather induced hot takes, but it is meant less ranty than it comes across:
Of the distributions that came to my practical knowledge that is one of the few that seem to make many promises of a certain perspective on computer science or even enginering maybe also science itself much more tangible, be it reproducibilty, supply chain integrity or even the omnipresent cybernetics (to use the 80s term) just to name a few.
More often than not it is the last two steps that make this or that a reality and that are missing here too and that is the issue with all tech solutions no descendant of nix or whatsover called distribution will ever solve. That we cannot replace human interactions or the social aspects of coding from the equation.
2 Likes
What got me into declarative systems was that i liked configuring minimal distros like Arch and Void to be exactly the way i wanted them to be, to the point where i couldn’t stand using opinionated distros anymore, however i didn’t like putting in that effort again when doing a reinstall. Of course the problem with that is you still have to put in the effort to learn how declarative systems work lol, but i guess it’s a case of putting in the effort once so you can be lazy in the future.
2 Likes
I can’t help but chuckle because I definitely understand where you’re coming from and especially with Arch.
One thing I started doing was copying and pasting my configuration files and emailing them to myself. If Gmail knew how much crap I emailed to myself I’m sure they would start charging me back rent for office space at this point 
1 Like
My approach to installing software on NixOS is a bit different. For me, atomicity is the primary benefit, while declarative configuration is a nice bonus rather than the foundation everything should be built around.
I keep only essential system packages and my environment declared in the configuration file. Regular user applications, on the other hand, are installed via nix profile.
This way I get the best of both worlds. I still benefit from atomic system updates (which I usually do once a month), but I don’t have to rebuild the entire system just because I want to update something like Discord or WebStorm.
1 Like
I like your style with that! It definitely makes sense and has an effective and efficient method to it! I think I’m going to have to adopt that technique.
Nix allows me to configure and forget. Configuration is no longer a mental or a maintenance burden
2 Likes
I used to write complex scripts and they always were breaking, so I spend a lot of time to avoid writing complex scripts, nix reproducibility allows me to write complex scripts again ( for better or worse )
3 Likes
Nix is definitely surprising in a lot of ways for sure, and the reproducibility is definitely a major plus in my book. I hope your scripting adventures continue as by the sounds of it (writing complex scripting) tells me you definitely have creative ideas.
I definitely agree with you on that aspect. That’s another adventure with Nix that I have noticed and it’s awesome to have that “set it and forgot it” option and it continues to function. I always found myself searching for configuration setups to see different structured and clean looking layouts. Everyone has their own way of organizing their config to meet their desired outcome and function of the system for sure.