|
|
|
|
|
|
by ayushnix
1706 days ago
|
|
|
I tried using NixOS a few years ago but found it too esoteric. Learning the Nix DSL and the NixOS way of doing things might be rewarding but it has a significant threshold that I'd need to cross before I'm comfortable using it. One of the things I really appreciate about Arch is the flexibility it offers. I'm not forced to use GRUB if I don't want to, unlike Fedora and Debian. I'm also not forced to see dm-crypt UUIDs on mounted disks like Dracut does. I can choose what I want. This latter issue was present in NixOS as well the last time I tried it. Oh, I'm also not a fan of how unbearably slow the nix package manager is compared to pacman. I do recognize the advantages of declarative configuration of your entire operating system though. |
|
|
Building a declared environment takes quite a while and switching a NixOS or home-manager generation takes even longer. It was my main complaint about NixOS when I was starting out.
The thing I realised though is that the main scenario where you actually need the speed is when you want to try things out and for that, Nix' ad-hoc environments are much better suited.
When I want to try a new program (btop for example), I simply run `nix-shell -p btop` rather than adding it to my declared environment and sitting through a `nixos-rebuild test`. That's usually faster and, more importantly, cleaner than installing the package to a global environment with a regular package manager.