Is NixOS Actually Incredible!?!

I've been told to mess around with NixOS for a really long time but I've never got around to it, turns out The Linux Cast has however
Full Episode: • #206 The Man Who Boyco...
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[@adjbutler]

Is NixOS Actually Incredible!?! Answer: Yes, yes it is... do not listen to matt... he just is tired of his nix fans telling him how great NixOS is.... hahahaha

[@brainstormsurge154]

The Nix wiki and documentation is ass though. I've experienced the same pain.

[@iatheman]

Painful to get started, painful to find the concrete definitions of things. Crazy language with poor documentation. Every try was painful and unproductive. I can copy people's flakes but that doesn't teach me anything about the crazy syntax and myriad of possible options available that some seem to know about of others don't.

[@CraigOlson]

a very poor explanation of nixos...

[@PygmySurfer]

Seriously. You think they could have at least TRIED to get a basic understanding of NixOS if they're going to talk about it. Not much of a surprise for Matt, but I expected more from Brodie.

[@CraigOlson]

@@PygmySurfer doesnt sound like Brodie has even tried it yet, and Matt was confusing the heck out of him during his "botched" explanation...

[@PygmySurfer]

@@CraigOlson Yeah I guess Brodie didn't really say much.

[@Powerofthepickle]

NixOS is the best distro as long as your willing to learn the nix language. The nixpkgs repo is itself the documentation

[@Redyf]

I agree, I just started to contribute to it. It's a great way to learn more about the nix language and how to contribute to open source. I'm not good at git at all so I've been learning a lot by making mistakes.

[@arthurbringel8610]

That's just cope. Its documentation is just bad. I say that as a user.

[@brandonlewis2599]

As a would-be user, this is a bullshit excuse. Just read the code! Moving on...

[@Cody4k]

Before watching: Yes. After watching: I first tried out NixOS by replicating my Fedora SwayWM environment in a VM. Migrated that config to a spare laptop, then my main. Now finishing up converting all my servers, and have a Pinephone running NixOS Mobile. Resistance is futile...

[@vaisakhkm783]

Wtf.... it took my months to even understand how to cobfigure it.. (in hinsight i shouldn't have jumped into it)

[@qweriop]

Brodie's face when Matt is explaining the nix file system is so funny.

[@adjbutler]

and he even mis-informed him on the file system as well he basically said ONLY THE /home dir exists which is just plain wrong... he doesn't understand nixos clearly he called gentoo better than nixos which is just a joke, plain and simple

[@TheLinuxCast]

I didn't say that only the Home directory exists, and if I did then I misspoke. I'm aware that the other directories exist in nixstore@@adjbutler

[@tomaintaround]

_what kind of extraterrestrial linux distro is he talking about?_

[@falxie_]

home-manager is NixOS configuration for your home directory and local user

[@adjbutler]

dotfile manager.... hahaha

[@falxie_]

@@adjbutler That and more, user services, programs, packages. It is nice for dotfiles though

[@vaisakhkm783]

XD i still uses stow and use home manager for installing things

[@vpxc]

it's a dotfile manager but it also installs actual packages and it generates your config files rather than just copying or ​or linking them

[@adjbutler]

2:00 /etc is on NixOS WTF dude (you are just not allowed to directly edit the hosts file as you have to define extra hosts via the config file) I think it is a nice security feature as linux virus scripts cannot add bad hosts even if they run as sudo because they will get a write error) /nix/store is the store directory /etc/nixos/ is where the config file lives !!! --- nix documentation is difficult due to flakes about to change every thing so everyone is thinking a lot of docs will change (when they wont really) gentoo is a joke compared to NixOS

[@vaisakhkm783]

XD actually, you can edit /etc nd corrept the system no problem...

[@dustycarrier4413]

NixOS is great from a security perspective imo, as you have extremely few vectors of infection. A proper full-control takeover of a nixos system MUST compromise the users capacity to modify their configuration AND THEN have them update to this newly modified system.

[@vaisakhkm783]

@@dustycarrier4413 nix os is not great, means it's not fully immutable, we can easly modify files, especally thing s like for home manager, we don't even need password

[@gorudonu]

NixOS is completely different than everything else, packages also work on macos and other distros, the ability to just make program and write nix flake for it so others can just come the code and it will install dependencies is so powerful

[@shambali293]

The reason for /nix/store is simple; reproduceability. All packages are linked against their EXACT dependencies (including version). This means you MUST have multiple copies of packages (different versions), typically libraries, installed in parallel, which would be impossible following the standard file system hierarchy. To solve this, each package/version is installed in a directory that has a hash of the packages contents, allowing the tools to verify the contents are the same as upstream. For those that will mention Docker (and similar), nix allows packages to share dependencies if the versions are identical (matching hash), where Docker always includes it's own copies, causing duplication. Also, nix predates Docker by a decade.

[@liesdamnlies3372]

Saving space by not duplicating dependencies, but also doing-away with dependency hell. I really need to try switching. It sounds wonderful.

[@oscs4556]

Nixos did start out as a research paper.

[@RenderingUser]

standard functional language origin story

[@MrGhost.]

Working as a developer changing PC offten. The i idea of just recreating my system with a simple curl and also sharing it to the rest of the team has made mye prepare to do the jump. Just changing script and tooling to use the nix package manager on othere distros and mac that can run it saves alot off time. So i will be using Nix stuff in some way, so was thinking of just moving over my main system as well

[@houstonbova3136]

If you’re halfway decent at using a computer and spend 1 month actually using nix you’ll realize the documentation is actually fine (lacking some places but includes 90% of what you need). The language is extremely simple so you can generally read and patch the source code when a feature you want isn’t exposed. Matt probably has the same brain that says that Rust isn’t a good language. It’s great and offers a lot you just need enough brain space to realize that things can be done differently and what the impacts of that are.

[@aoeuable]

/usr actually exists, but the only thing in it is /usr/bin/env. /bin/sh also exists. Both are symlinks into /nix/store. /proc, /dev etc. also are standard, and a lot of configuration lives in /etc (though much, but not all of it is managed by nix which isn't really optimal). Without those using shebangs would be impossible, also, they're prescribed by POSIX (the rest of the FHS is actually not, it's a linux standard). As to suitability for non-devops / non-programmers: There's been talk about it but a) it's not a priority and b) even if it were a priority migrating completely to flakes would still come first, building a normie-friendly interface around 20 years of hysterical raisins and then having to do it all again isn't how the community works. Much of the current confusion and difficulty getting into things is indeed because the transition to flakes isn't done yet.

[@adjbutler]

the REAL documentation is the nix community who love talking about nix to new people!

[@iatheman]

I just asked a few questions on Discord, got the answers and some link to places outside the nix main site, at the end the results were all vague or empty (no explanation for mkIf, for example). It's just not a fun or productive experience to get proficient in Nix/NixOS.

[@Nebulorum]

Coming from functional programming Nix makes a lot of sense. You declare your configuration and the system makes it happen. Once you let go of being imperative (I.e. send commands one at a time) you see a good system can be declared and magically wired.

[@Joris-KarlHuysmans]

Absolutely agree. I understand it better if I think of how Scala works.

[@AlexandruVoda]

NixOS and GoboLinux, in their very different own ways, are the only distros that dare to deviate the FHS. I personally welcome this change. Even though I got used to it and even though I understand the historical reasons I find the FHS very confusing and outdated.

[@adjbutler]

NixOS video WHEN???? WHEN!!!!

[@adjbutler]

matt has a "feud" with NixOS.... hmmmmmmmm..........

[@minecraftpufferfish9066]

NixOS is absolutely incredible. The documentation is incredibly bad. Can't even argue with that.

[@adjbutler]

i main and game on NixOS btw for 1 year as my first main linux distro (never distro hopped) only used server Linux until now think about that, the first time I fully switch to linux is for NixOS, hard core Linux boys have to change their understanding of how Linux can be 10x better using NixOS/Linux During the first month I had to learn the Nix way of doing things, but after that smooth sailing, except for Linux related issues and one or two NixOS specific related issues. (still had to learn the nix way of doing things) mainly the nix language (which is a pure functional language which can be tricky to learn if you are only used to javascript/shell/c/python/and the like

[@fahimhussain1918]

Same I had 0 experience with desktop Linux only ever used it for servers and ssh so I was pretty much only familiar with basic commands. I think that’s why Nix was easier to get into because my brain wasn’t molded into the traditional way of navigating desktop Linux. Learning the nix language and flakes was a rewarding hurdle and it’s so nice to be able to work on projects with dependencies isolated from each other. Although for gaming, Itried to use Lutris and every time I try to add a game, I’m always missing a dependency. I try to add it to Lutris but it doesn’t work. That’s been my only gripe, but I just install games either through steam or package it myself.

[@brandonlewis2599]

Frankly, I'm hoping a more mainstream distro picks up the key ideas from nix, and serves it to existing users with a better presentation. The declarative nature / reproducibility / etc are great, but I don't understand why changes to the system can't be captured automatically by a more traditional command-line interface. At least, as a starting point. And I don't understand why NixOS still can't be bothered to properly document itself.

[@Hydridity]

best comparison I can give you about NixOS is Imagine Arch but immutable. You can build it piece by piece, pick every single component you want/dont want but you dont install them by hand you instead select them in configuration Then you tell system to build itself based on that configuration, after that you find regular filesystem structure (/etc /var /usr/bin ...) but you cant edit them, they are just symlinks to the nix store paths that were built based on that configuration, and because of this, you can roll back the system to previous configuration, it just re-arranges the symlinks That's where the beauty is, the configuration file is the single source of truth about the system

[@deviantsemicolon618]

Technically immutable Arch exists in the form of Arkane Linux. But I get what you're saying

[@iatheman]

The only issue the the configuration file (it ends up being a ton of files for a full system) is NOT trivial to understand. The documentation on the Nix language is terrible.

[@Anthropomorphic]

Regarding the documentation being bad, one common response here is that it's bad because it's actually not possible for it to be good, because there isn't a single "canonical" way of doing anything in NixOS. The more complete answer, I think, might be that there isn't a single canonical way of doing things because NixOS is a downstream product of the Nix language, and the language isn't limited to a single canonical way of doing anything.

[@lordkekz4]

I don't think documentation has to be bad just because you have lots of choice. If the documentation explains the concepts and shows at least one clear way of achieving things, you should be able to choose the right strategy yourself. On the flipside, there's plenty of tools where there is a correct way of doing things, but the documentation is still bad because it doesn't tell you how you're supposed to do it. As for providing a consistent file structure, there are different approaches, but none that seem fit for everyone. I've tried using SnowfallLib but I stopped because it absolutely didn't fit my requirements. I'm still looking for a way to easily extend my nixos and home-manager configs outside my current flake; it would be so cool if I could make them composable kind of like overlays.

[@gnupph]

Linux KZbinrs (especially the non-dev type) are the worst type of Linux users, change my mind. All you do is writing complex config (u guys can’t program) across the system to build your system. And most of you take pride in that. I don’t understand why you think writing multiple formats of config is ok, but Nix unifying all configs in one language is a bad thing. What a shallow, sputid talk. Just uninformed rants about software from people who don’t even understand software. The first time I tried NixOS, I was able to mirror my Arch builds in less than 30 min, with full disk encryption, LVM, and other configuration including my dev env, on my laptop. TLDR: you have skill issues and should actually RTFM, because even tho Nix docs are bad, it’s not that bad if you understand basic programming and how software works.

[@iatheman]

Okay genius guy, NixOS was your home all along. It still doesn't change the fact that documentation is so bad and lacking that it appeals only to a limited group that had the right prior experience to actually get productive quickly. I agree that configuring environments and tools in 1000 different ways in files scattered everywhere SUCKS. Nix, in theory, sounds GREAT. But the implementation, with a brand new language that's poorly documented, functions and definitions scattered in the pixpkgs source code, and little official production official guidance, is just as bad as the situation outside Nix. To those who had experience enough to intuit Nix and how it does things despite the bad docs (when they exist): congratulations, it must be really nice.

[@gnupph]

@@iatheman idk bro, but I think if someone with no linux experience tries installing and making a daily driver system out of arch or nixos, they will find that both are equally hard. but arch is much harder when it comes to hardware support or optimization. On the other hand, for nixos users, the hardware stuff is autogenerated at install time, or easily imported from nixos-hardware. With nixos, it’s harder to mess up and corrupt your boot. nixos also has the snapshotting capabilities built-in at the foundation, which helps because failing boots directly cause new linux users to give up and switch back to windows or ubuntu oh and the “programming” parts aren’t needed at all for beginner Nix users - they can edit the Nix values just like json config values, or simply copying the Nix files already written by someone else. nix also allows other people to help u debug and reproduce the problems you are having, which saves new users from the toxic “rtfm” or “provide more context for us before u ask for help u idiots..” kind of answers.

[@iatheman]

@@gnupph All that sounds really good. Maybe getting into flakes right off the bat was a mistake. I tend to enjoy learning the tool on my own for a while via its source and documentation, then go to the community with specific questions. But my experience with NixOS was that I needed the community from the get go and couldn't rely on the resources available to start understanding the Nix way. There's a friend at work that's a linux beginner. We tried NixOS at the same time. Long story short, he's on EndeavourOS now as he couldn't find the answers to get his PC working with steam and nvidia. And EOS (Arch based) made it work just by installing the distro and running `yay install steam`. That being said, pure Arch is probably harder than NixOS and I still wish to try it again (still have a bootable installation of it). But I'd love to understand that frigging crazy Nix language is doing (or is capable of doing) so I can feel in control.

[@vaisakhkm783]

5:04 it's not a hot take Matt... its simply a fact that nix documentation sucks the thing is, nixpkgs itself is the documentation

[@samconnelly7630]

Correction: /var is not in the Nix store, meaning it is mutable.

[@atemoc]

I use Nix. As soon as I stopped trying to touch flakes my world got so much more painless. Everything I do and need just fits neatly in configuration.nix, and I don't need to touch flake. Also, as for the documentation, basically all of it is unofficial, and the Nix team has basically just started the initiative to start an official wiki.

[@CrazyMineCuber]

Flakes are not complicated at all. Thay are just badly explained. They are litterly just a dependency locking system to get perfect reproducibility. You can do exactly the same things you do today without flakes. To use flakes you just have to add a single file to your repo, but everything else is exactly the same.

[@adjbutler]

yes, I am still just using a single config file for my main... you do not need to split into multiple files unless you are building multiple different machines (servers, laptops, and desktops) and you want to have the same user on each but different packages etc... the REAL documentation is the nix community who love talking about nix to new people!

[@CrazyMineCuber]

Or you just go crazy like me and define 4 different systems (servers, laptop, pc) across 100 files totaling 9000 lines of nix code :)

[@atemoc]

@@adjbutler Random talks spread all over the web is not documentation.

[@atemoc]

@@CrazyMineCuber My single configuration.nix file works on my AMD+NVIDIA (with Nvidia prime!) desktop PC, AMD desktop PC, Intel laptop, and really, ancient intel laptop. I don't need flakes for that, and my config file is less than 1000 lines long.

[@Redyf]

Short answer: YES NixOS is by far the best distro I've ever used (totally non biased answer☠)

[@Sinthoras155]

Yeah NixOS is great until you need the files to be in /lib or /usr. Then it's awful

[@Sinthoras155]

I will probably switch to another Distro with home-manager on top soon. It is really annoying sometimes.

[@damnhatesyou]

NixOS is an enterprise networking, DevOps, and programming distro. It's not some KZbinr/content creator thing. This is why the talk around NixOS baffles KZbinrs. They are not the intended target of the distro.

[@AdamButler-gv2gv]

except for @ChrisTitusTech of course

[@damnhatesyou]

@trevor2102 I totally agree. I’ve stopped watching him ages ago.

[@rjawiygvozd]

as if there is a youtuber distro, whatever that means

[@ardishco]

That's not true I play games on NixOS all the time, watch movies and such, It's perfectly suitable for personal use too. Just because its different and more difficult to use doesnt mean that it's only for programmers, servers of devops. Matt doesn't use the distros he talks about as much as he complains about them.

[@rjawiygvozd]

@@ardishco definitely true that nixos works just fine for daily driving on desktop/laptop and it's likely how most people that keep talking about on the internet are using it. Also I don't really believe it is harder or takes longer for a new user to set up nixos than gentoo or even arch. And you don't really need to know the config language, copypasting examples until you're more or less familiar with the syntax is more than enough for most cases.

[@vaisakhkm783]

NixOS is exact same as any linux distro,but just need to see the pattern all /etc and other folders exsits, but in a vertual enviroment, so you don't get and package conflicts and you can pick which you want

[@vpxc]

Home Manager in 3 sentences: Home Manager is like NixOS for your local user instead of for the entire system. NixOS installs programs for everyone and generates systemwide config files that it symlinks into /etc. Home Manager installs programs just for your user, and generates config files it symlinks into $HOME.

[@davidluza6872]

I'm using NIXos now, mainly because I'm learning and I've broken all other distros and always in such a way that putting it together was more complicated than trying a new distro. With NIXos, I can go back to any generation at any time and continue testing. In addition, the system is really fast and, in my opinion, really simple, I switched from gentoo last time.

[@lorenzozapaton4031]

btw I use NixOS

[@penguinwrangler1012]

As a systems administrator the fact I can have configurations that setup my various servers I need and then when I go to various clients I can just modify them for their needs relatively easily makes NixOS wonderful for me.

[@andherium]

I don't know why this guy is talking about Nix when he himself doesn't get it

[@oscs4556]

I suspect there is a marketing genius working at Nixos now.

[@ReLoneR]

Nix has so much problems and issues with various nixpackages that just don't work like they should. But the nix dev's favourite response is: its not nix problem, and then just ignore issues for months. I mean, even their live iso installer is broken for like 3 months already and they do not care. Such level of ignorance personally i cant deal with

[@Hid4ri]

I tried nixos a while a go and struggled with it, my mindset was still in the typical Linux fashion. I have recently gone back to it with a more open mind to have something different and I am enjoying it, the learning curve has been a fun one. I am now up and running with nixos and hyprland and I am using Nvidia. So far the only issue I have is with brave browser where screen starts to tear and break up. Firefox is fine.

[@adjbutler]

i am so looking forward to trying out hyprland with nixos, I am still just x11+kde for now... probably do a VM to fine tune the new config first.... when I get the time...

[@Hid4ri]

@@adjbutler that's a good idea, I did mine on a second SSD where I normally try out distros, and for the first time moved Linux over my main SSD that had windows 11. NixOS has really won me over! Though I am yet to setup flakes and home manager, looking at other configs, I just don't see the benefit, maybe I am lacking a proper understanding, I don't know.

[@patriot925]

I suspect the people who developed nixOS got stuck in dependency hell one too many times... And created the solution.

[@SamualN]

nixos is great. my linux pipeline has been windows -> ubuntu -> manjaro -> arch -> nix (on arch) -> nixos

[@daishes]

(windows -> endeavouros -> popos -> arch -> (fedora -> windows -> ubuntu -> macos -> ubuntu (at work)) -> nixos nowadays i shuffle between ubuntu, nixos and windows

[@derekr54]

"I don't use Nix bye the way".

[@andrabtedja]

NixOS is hard when we are not relearn everything we know about Linux distro. Documentation is bad when we expect it does everything like Arch did.

[@iatheman]

NixOS is hard because the documentation if bad. The community is nice, though and they provide all the unofficial answers you can ask, even if it won't make sense for a while (specially if you need to learn functional programming).

[@wilfridtaylor]

What is a nixos? Never heard of it. :p

[@mactan_sc]

everything about nix whether its flakes or not just makes me feel like its the i3wm of package managers

[@no_name4796]

Except i3wm doesn't fuck up the file system and makes htop basically unreadable lol. I like the ideas behind nixos, but in a similar fashion to rust, if you dig even a little it gets crazy very fast, so i prefer stickting to less stable distros but which i know how they work

[@genericgamer1319]

@@no_name4796 you're not supposed to care about the Nix store all the locations you should care about are pretty easy to find

[@DeathEnducer]

Nix is harder than pacman

[@ZaneyOG]

As a passionate NixOS user lol... Loved this clip! Keep up the great content Brodie 😎

[@StaffyDoo]

It is. _Next!_

[@szaszm_]

I'm old enough to remember the old Arch TUI installer. I think it became easier to install after they removed the TUI installer and documented manual CLI installation as the recommended way.

[@Ether_Void]

I played with nix for a bit but found it quickly very annoying to install programs that aren't packaged or in some cases require a "normal" file structure. Of course I could learn how to write a nix script to install it the nix way, but if I want to play around with the software I don't want to play around with Nix. Reproducibility is good in some cases, but for me it's often a annoying middle step that I don't need on a personal system.

[@MFTAQ]

He should chosen Linux Mint 😛😛😛😛😛😛😛😛😛😛 we know how much Matt loves Linux Mint and Nuggies to.

[@Shywizz]

💀 I wasn't going to but damn bro chill Else he's gonna hear you and come for the feast

[@MFTAQ]

@@Shywizz 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@TheLinuxCast]

That word haunts me. ffs

[@MFTAQ]

@@TheLinuxCast 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 love your work dude, just messing with you.

[@adjbutler]

nix lang is a lot like haskell and lisp which can be tricky but it is easier to learn than other pure functional langs

[@akshettrj]

3:19 LINUX IS JUST THE KERNEL

[@Q-Ball.]

I think I am going to be a nix hater

[@TheGroundScore]

NixOS vs Void ....

[@davidyoder5890]

As a Windows admin who regularly uses Linux servers with tools like SaltStack, I can see the benefit of using a distro like NixOS. Simply deploying a few config files to stand up a fleet of devices is an attractive proposition. But I don't see any compelling reason to do this when Windows has had tools to do this for literally decades. And since Windows Vista, when Microsoft introduced the WIM format to deploy Windows, this is now a trivial task. The current versions of the Windows Automated Installation Kit are vastly superior to the Linux tooling that tries to achieve the same thing.

[@adjbutler]

i don't see any compelling reason to use Windows because Linux is 100% free to build 1000 systems

[@davidyoder5890]

@@adjbutler I get that, and Linux is a great solution in some use cases. So many times though, the "free" cost of Linux is really misrepresented. For nearly every business, Windows has the lowest total cost of ownership and provides the most features and versatility. Linux is free to use, but who will I hire to manage a network of Linux devices? A Linux admin *will* cost more than a Windows admin, so I'll need to hire less. If I hire less, this means projects might take longer to complete. And since I'm a business, I need to make sure the systems being installed are fully supported - and after paying for support, I've now spent more than I would have for Windows licenses. I could keep going, but the idea that Linux is free can only be applied to the cost of the OS itself - it is not free in any other way, and is often more expensive than Windows.

[@naranyala_dev]

we need more kind of this, i mean more

[@dezly-macauley]

😠NixOS gave me the most headache out of any distro when trying to do Software Engineering. Its a distro that constantly reminds you that you are on NixOS (Compared to Arch that just stays out of your way once you've set it up) Trying to setup authentication on Hyprland with Nixos? Like Matt said... NixOs does follows its own file structure. Trying to install a JavaScript package globally? Nix: "We don't do that here" (The manual will straight up tell you that is a deliberate design choice by Nix) Trying to work with smart contracts / blockchain? Tools like Foundry become buggy unless you set them up the Nix way (good luck as both a newish) Trying to setup Mason on Neovim? Lol NixOS won't let those binaries install. Now you have to redirect your LSP (sometimes they'll miraculously work) Note: All of the above will work on NixOS but expect to spend a lot of time figuring things out.

[@AdamButler-gv2gv]

Mason is a package manager for Neovim, Nix is the package manager you use for Neovim on NixOS... thats why mason or lazy or whatever isn't allowed because they just don't work on NixOS

[@feetwind]

Yeah you have to buy into the core ideas of NixOS in the first place or else you'll constantly be fighting it or confused trying to edit files that are actually arcane-looking symlinks to /nix/store/... like Matt seems to have been here. Or if you're using it just for making development or build environments, just use the Nix package manager within whatever distro you're already using, just like you would use rustup/cargo for doing Rust dev in Arch, even though Arch does already provide a bunch of Rust packages.

[@vojtechralis6075]

yes, fhs compatibility layer needs to be done. not globally installing JS and python packages can be pain in the ass, but you're never going to have to solve problems that arise from globally installed packages like on other distributions. tradeoffs.

[@flyingsl0ths]

it's hell when using it for development

[@grandpaspoopsock]

Can you try GuixOS? I've been very curious because on paper the features and design seem better, especially since everything is in scheme, but adoption seems much lower.