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> I don't want a 'journey' to use my OS. I don't want to learn a whole new language and set of overengineered abstractions to solve what I see as, at most, 5% more of application installation problems that are already 75% solved by package managers[0]. If the Nix community wants more people using Nix, they'll have to make it more attractive for those of us who do not want to waste so much time needlessly learning new stuff to do the same things we're already doing. This is fair, but keep in mind that package managing is only a small part that what Nix solves, and it is a much superior solution than anything else that I know (Docker for example is not really reproducible because you can't trace all dependencies; this seems like a philosophic issue but I saw some containers breaking because some dependency inside the container was updated without nobody knowing). If we take NixOS, it also solves the issue with configuration, and with some auxiliary tools it also solves issues with deployment. You have alternatives for both of the issues too, but the fact that NixOS is much more integrated than any tooling (like Ansible, Puppet, etc) means you have much more flexibility. Also, don't forget atomic upgrades and fallback. Eventually, instead of "wasting time", NixOS starts to save time by becoming the most reliable OS you ever used: you will never waste time anymore reinstalling your system from scratch, or if your hardware broke, you will never waste days trying to get your system to the same way it was. Also, because nixpkgs is enormous, you also tend to save time by not looking at "oh, this program seems cool, how can I install it on my computer since I never heard of this XYZ language?", and them installing the package manager from the language in 5 different ways because you have no clue. And even when you need to package the program yourself, nixpkgs has many abstractions that makes it much easier. So instead of wasting time, Nix and NixOS is an investment. You may choose to invest your time right now to save later or not. Either way is fine. Just to finish the topic, I fully concur yo you that we as a community needs to have better documentation. |