I've done a lot of OS upgrades in my life... and I have to say, OpenBSD does it better than any I've ever seen...
Literally just `doas sysupgrade` and bam, you have an updated system 5 mins later. The post-upgrade steps are unsurprisingly straightforward for most systems (https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade79.html).
@ctietze I have used Nix a bit. I think the reproducibility is super cool but the extra space, filesystem weirdness, and general UX (even with caches) are a hard sell. But I’ve got a number of friends locally who swear by it as a build system.
Some of them also run NixOS, which is simultaneously an even more intellectually appealing idea but seems like it would be even more of a lift for most people (including me). I haven’t tried it.
@ctietze I also have to say that I think it’s not something that gets in your way if you put in the significant effort to get past the learning curve. Sorta like Rust 😂 But with a slightly more divided community (apparently Flakes are THE WAY but all documentation treats it like experimental for complicated reasons).
The people I know who run it have been doing so for years and love it.
@ctietze Nix is focused on reproducibility where you can totally separate (mutable) data and applications. This is super valuable and I apply that concept to FreeBSD jails, docker deploys, etc. but NixOS goes WAY further. I think it’s a cool concept but you need to really commit to that being the thing you’re optimizing for.
Ironically it’s probably never been more relevant with all the AI stuff and vibe coded poorly behaved apps 😅 Isolarion and integrity are going to be even more important.
Ian Wagner
Christian Tietze