Why do I have to switch from Arch to NixOS?

Let’s give it a try. Is it true that nixos has a big layer of abstraction? Many things are made in the background without having any control ? I can live with some managing help but I’ve to be the master of my machine :slight_smile:

Yes, a lot of stuff is abstracted away, though still you are in full control. I have not yet found a situation in which I had less control than on my arch machine.

Quite the opposite seems to be the fact, as I can have my applications configuration as well as the necessary parts of the nginx reverse proxy in the same file, instead of having to wade a plentora of files which are not related to each other and in case of nginx even intermixed with settings for other applications.

Ahhh that’s a good thing. Can I still compile and install some programs by myself? Like compiling dwm and installing it with “make” - “make install” for example ? Modifying my .bashrc and .xinitrc stay like usual or even that is different here? I’m afraid that some easy things on other distros will be difficult in NixOs :-(. If I understand, packages installed by nix are put in some place and that place is symlinked to user-space … And what about os updates/upgrades? Rolling, fixed and how do things go?

You can still manage those files on your own, though it’s an either this or that decision, once a file is owned by the store, you have to manage it through nix, or reclaim it from the store and manage it manually again.

Though mixing is possible by “importing” by the corresponding files means.

Eg. For your bash config you could add a line to the generated config that conditionally imports your manual additions.

This way a mixed usage is at least partially possible.


I doubt though that you can use make install as the most common prefix pathes are just not available in nixOS. If though you use $HOME as prefix it might work.

Anyway, wrapping it in a derivation, adding it to the personal overlay and installing it using the user or system config is the preferred way.

Hmmm. So the philosophy behind is a bit different. Ok.

Thanks for your answers.

Well, in arch you really shouldn’t do make install either if you care for your system, but you really should wrap it in a PKGBUILD and install it that way.

A post our marketing team may consider here :slight_smile:

I’d argue that both nixos and arch are bloated considering most applications/libraries are compiled with support for almost everything they support, that’s pretty much the common definition of bloat.

One man’s bloat is another man’s features though.