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NixOS is the best operating system I absolutely cannot recommend to anyone - Anurag Singh
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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Damn right. And the Nixos community forums are full of people unwilling to accept this. They will gaslight you into thinking you're the problem. "Just do this", as I'd it's completely obvious and you're dumb for not realising that. Of course if they find out you have some ideological incompatibility with them, you're out anyway.
NIXOS really needs a fork. One that embraces or rejects flakes outright. One that stops inviting ideological battles. And one that embraces documentation.
Do you have some specific threads in mind? Maybe I'm lucky to never click on the bad ones but my experience is that nobody is more cynical regarding Nix/NixOS jank than the long time NixOS users. You might not always get the answer you want, because it is very jank and doing some things will get you into trouble. But people pointing that out isn't the same thing as gaslighting.
Guix SD might be worth a look, it seems to be just straight up better in many technical regards. It has no flakes, comprehensive documentation and a blessed way to manage user homes. At least as long as you don't really need WiFi of course...
It's been a while since I left the forums, but there always seems to be drama and something going on. I didn't the community to be very helpful and inviting. It left a very bad taste in my mouth and in mostly avoid it. Now I ask LLMs to whip something up when in need it.
I thought that was a solved problem on Linux. Is it the reluctance to use binary blobs?
Yes. For the same reason you also don't get firmware updates on Guix. Or Firefox.
I'm using GuixSD on my desktop, and while I think it's better in terms of creating stuff that doesn't already exist in upstream repos, there's so much functionality missing that's present in nixpkgs and random flakes online that for the average person complaining about Nix jank it's very likely not worth the effort. On the bright side they released 1.5 recently so you no longer have to use a 3 year old image (that likely doesn't work right if your computer is too new) or a nightly one to get things running.
Hey, now – the NonGuix repo. exists!
_
For those unfamiliar, it contains software with proprietary elements that otherwise can't make it into the Guix software repository, à lanon-freefor Debian.You can get the normal Linux kernel and all the hardware compatibility you'd typically expect easily through NonGuix.
For some reason, stuff like libre wolf isn't in the guix repo. Not even Firefox. It's very confusing.
Firefox's use of Encrypted Media Extensions violates the GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines as it allows for playing of DRM-protected content which can steer people to non-free software (there may be additional other reasons but that's one I definitely know of).
But it's perfectly available in NonGuix; I use Firefox regularly on Guix.
As for Librewolf, I'm not sure that's accurate? I see it available in the default Guix repo.s, latest version: https://packages.guix.gnu.org/packages/librewolf/.
It was added about 2 years ago. Admittedly, Guix is a smaller distro so some packages aren't packaged immediately just as a consequence of a lack of human resources; but it also continues to improve over time, quite nicely.
You are thinking of the better alternative, guix
I'm not that much a fan of brackets and jumping through hoops to install anything non-GNU.
There are forks of Nix. Perhaps you might like Lix.
I haven't yet found out where its major differences lie. And it seems like they haven't taken a firm stance on flakes (yes or no). They also only forked the interpreter, not nixpkgs. A good step, but their documentation wasn't good, the last time I checked.