a few people in the replies are asking why someone might want to use nix as an OS / to manage your python packages / to manage your config files.
does anyone want to share their reasons for doing those things? I don't really know.
(please give examples of some specific problems Nix solves for you and what you like about it, don't just say "it's reproducible/declarative” :) )
@b0rk Nix has made computing fun again!
I run NixOS on my laptop, desktop, NAS, home server, and multiple VPSs. There are a couple reasons why I switched away from other OSs and tools:
- Everything is configured with code, stored in Git
- This code can be shared easily between machines
- Upgrades to machines are incredibly safe, with the safety net of rollbacks or even booting an older config directly!
- One and done! Now that I have these configs, OS install is a single command.
@b0rk I have however found that there are a number of things that you'll end up implementing yourself that are necessary for managing these more complex setups. There are a handful of tools in the ecosystem to try and make this easier like flake-utils, flake-utils-plus, flake-parts, etc. They all try to solve different problems in different ways, Nix is still finding its footing here. Though I'm happy with Snowfall Lib :)
@b0rk in case anyone is curious what this setup looks like, it's all on GitHub!
This repo has all of my system configs and some packages: https://github.com/jakehamilton/config
I made my own custom neovim that comes with my config and plugins: https://github.com/jakehamilton/neovim
I also did the same for tmux: https://github.com/jakehamilton/tmux
Julia Evans
Jake Hamilton
Janne Moren
Benjamin