this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2026
836 points (97.9% liked)
linuxmemes
32597 readers
1441 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
- Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated. This is an LGBTQ+-friendly community -- if that is a problem for you, you should leave.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudoin Windows. - No porn, no politics, no trolling or ragebaiting.
- Don't come looking for advice, this is not the right community.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves / tolerates / hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
5. 🇬🇧 Language/язык/Sprache
- This is primarily an English-speaking community. 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇺🇸
- Comments written in other languages are allowed.
- The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
- Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed.
6. (NEW!) Regarding public figures
We all have our opinions, and certain public figures can be divisive. Keep in mind that this is a community for memes and light-hearted fun, not for airing grievances or leveling accusations. - Keep discussions polite and free of disparagement.
- We are never in possession of all of the facts. Defamatory comments will not be tolerated.
- Discussions that get too heated will be locked and offending comments removed.
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
NixOs is in shambles
Every time i see a comment about NixOS it makes me even more wary about trying it.
Everyone jokes about Arch being the 'from the ground up' OS, but Nix feels like it embodies those memes.
Yeah nixos is a lot of learning and a lot of writing and tweaking .nix files.
That being said, once you have a setup you like that works it means installing on a new machine is mostly just running a couple of install commands and all your apps/settings/environment secrets/anything you’ve declared in your nix config (like dotfiles for apps unsupported by home-manager) come with you and are version controlled on the system and in code.
But it doesn’t work like a normal Linux system, there is no /bin/bash among thousands of other things, so it’s for a niche audience where it’s either a server with infra as code or a desktop that requires a lot of work to maintain but has some incredible advantages (like generations)
Yeah it was my pipeline. But be wary, this is a hard path to take. The os is great. The package manager is great. The nix config language? Hahaha welcome to hell! It takes at least 6 months to get comfortable with it. And still, sometimes you can still come across a config file that will be totally alien to you. And when you need something not in the repos... time to learn how to package stuff!
It's not to discourage you, but be warned. It takes time. I had 5 attempts at it before it became my daily driver.
Keep a working distro on the side. And when you start your computer, think about what you want to do. If you think you can do everything you want today in NixOs, boot it. If you have a lot missing/do not feel like configuring it, boot the other distro. Just start small. Do some little challenges like turning your config into a flake, create a nix os module, split your configuration in smaller more maintainable files, create a systemd service, wrangle with that damn home manager that keeps making everything so confusing.
And arch is actually the one from scratch. NixOs is intimately linked to systemd. Nix also requires some base dependencies like git and curl, so it's not from scratch. However you could argue that NixOs is a "make a distro from the kitchen utensils and a recipe".