[nextos]

I agree, but I'm not so negative about its future.

As a starting point, I think Nix needs to become a bit more predictable. I like Arch Linux or Slackware because they are minimal (all packages are mostly vanilla upstream, nothing installed if you don't explicitly do it yourself) plus all operations have obvious side effects. Nix is also minimal, but sometimes side effects are really non-obvious. For example, when you update your system and you are subscribed to some channels, it's not obvious whether you will get binary substitutes (packages) or you will trigger a lot of local compilation. Things are getting better, e.g. with dry-run capabilities, but a more friendly UI should be default.

Furthermore, there should be better documented ways to run software that hasn't been packaged for Nix. There are tons of options: Docker, Systemd containers, FHS chroots. But it should be obvious too.

On the other hand, I can honestly say that if you want a really hassle-free machine that never breaks and you are not installing stuff that isn't packaged, NixOS is arguably one of the best distros out there. I have a few remote machines overseas in my dads house for some of his simulations. He knows no Linux. I can update Nix machines and tweak configuration remotely knowing that nothing will break. I can rollback anytime. Plus the whole configuration is a single declarative file.

[pknopf]

If you like Arch, but still want the immutability and reliability of NixOS, you should check out a project I developed, Darch.

https://godarch.com/

[grzm]

I understand and very much sympathize with your desire to share a project you've worked on. However, after four such comments, this is starting to look like spam.