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Gentoo (actually Funtoo) was the last distribution I used on my main laptop before switching to NixOS. (I have tried Guix, but not GuixSD, so won't talk about it.) > 1) Are these kind of systems overkill for the desktop user? There is more to learn to be free to do everything — for some this might be too much (even though it is easy to start and the learning is mostly gradual), for others this is fine (especially those viewing the obstacles as opportunities to learn rather than distractions), and many others can be satisfied with their systems before achieving such freedom. While efficient usage of NixOS requires more upfront involvement, once settled or learned it becomes the easiest to maintain, and brings the piece of mind I had with no other OS with its easy global configuration, nondestructive updates, and manageable malleability (adding and customizing packages, effortlessly offloading their build to your other machines with Nix, even without NixOS). > 2) How easy is it to customize/tweak these systems in the manner that Gentoo does? So, building from source by tweaking the software options on build time? Nixpkgs have close to optimal balance between the ability to use prebuilt packages and the ability to extend them, and it's more customizable (thanks to Nix and Nixpkgs designed to allow reaching into the old definition of a package, writing tweaks just for the parts you need, while keeping automatic updates!), although it's geared towards users that want most of their packages prebuilt (in particular it does not have cross-cutting USE-flags). You can either replace a package (and cause dependent ones to be rebuilt against it), or override under a new name (and install it alongside other packages that may depend upon and actually use the non-overridden one). |