hi I’m still exploring stuff and I was thinking about nix, with all his stuff, what do you guys think? maybe someone with experience can tell me if I should stay away from that or could be a good choice for privacy, anonimity and security

  • jlow (he/him)@beehaw.org
    3·
    8 months ago

    One of my admin friends said it’s not really made with desktop users in mind but more for people who need to set up (lots of) computers / servers quite often (= admins). If you’re not planning on distro hopping or reinstalling your system all the time it doesn’t really do anything for you that any other distro plus a good backup strategy already does. Plus you can use the Nix package manager without installing NixOS on the distro you’re on right now, if you wanna check it out.

    How do people here feel about this evaluation?

    • Unmapped@lemmy.ml
      1·
      8 months ago

      I switched from arch to nixos about three weeks ago. I can’t imagin ever using another distro again.

      While it differently seems like it would be made for admins because of how easy it is to setup more computers from your config. I think its actually made for software devs.

      I don’t plan on disto hoping or reinstalling a lot. But its nice knowing If I break nixos with a update all I have to do is reboot back to the last good build. Or worst case I just clone my got repo to a new install and rebuild my whole setup in one command.

      While as you said this is possible with other distros and good backups. Nixos makes it so much simpler. Well once you learn how to config with nix. Which brings me to my favorite part about nixos. Everything is configured in one place. Well two including home manager. everything. My zsh, starship, tmux, neovim, zerotier, docker, syncthing, steam, desktop environment. All configured in just those 2 files. Along with a list of every package you install. Which if you remove a package or switch to a different DE. Everything your not using is just removed from you system entirely. When I’m using gnome I have all the gnome programs. Then when I switch back to hyprland they are all gone again.

      I said that was my favorite part but I think my actual favorite part is how dependencies work. As I understand it. Say two packages both need python. They each get there own python package instead of sharing. That way every program has the exact versions of the dependencies that it needs. But as you said you can install nix package manager on any distro for that part. I just love having all these features plus more all in one.

      I’m not sure if all the this rambling gets across what I was trying to say. I’m just have been blown away and so excited about nixos since I tried it. It feels like I’m using a system from the future.

      Tldr: Your Friend is mostly correct. It can all be done on other distros. But the nixos way of doing it is amazing. Once you learn it.