What should I beware if considering switching from unstable to stable NixOS?

[8573]

Currently I use NixOS unstable. I’m considering trying to switch to NixOS stable, as I question whether having new major releases of software is, to me, worth repeatedly downloading tens of gigabytes and having my configuration often stop building because of changes in nixpkgs.

What potential hazards are there to beware in switching from unstable to stable NixOS? Is switching from unstable to stable even feasible?

Google results for “nixos switch from unstable to stable” seem to be about switching from stable to unstable or not about NixOS.

[olaf]

I didn’t had a issue .

Maybe have a look here:

21.11 -> 22.05 upgrade questions thread

Maybe nice to have one thread with all small questions/minor issues specific to upgrading from 21.11 to 22.05. Let me start: Q: on bootup I get a message that SGX is disabled by BIOS. I don’t use SGX, and the setting hardware.cpu.intel.sgx.provision.enable is unset which implies disabled. How do I get rid the message on bootup?

[davidak]

I documented software that cause issues when downgraded here: Downgrade issues - NixOS Wiki

You can try out if everything works as expected or roll back if not. When there are too big issues, you have to wait for your unstable release to become stable, so you can switch to stable without issues. When software causes issues, you can also delete the programs user data und start fresh.

Please add software that don’t like being downgraded to the wiki page.