Is there a single thing nix does that isnt easier to do with a simple bash script applied over whatever your favorite distro is? Reproducible builds is all that comes to mind
Some things you could do is apply theming in an autistic nix way, configure some services to auto run and setup monitoring and reporting for them.
Yes, just enabling a service or program is one line in nix but the module behind can do a lot of things (install the package, create and enable the systemd service file, install and setup any db if needed or other service dependencies, set some default settings…). For some service that would be quite the bash script.
Also theming in nix is very easy for the apps supported by Stylix.
If you’re just using it to declare packages and some configs then yeah you could definitely run like a post-install script or something on top of a minimal distro. I’ve done this for a while when i was using Void. It’s get trickier though when you consider that nix can also lock your config at a specific version of all the software you have installed, which i don’t think can easily be done on the average distro. There’s also the rollbacks, though i suppose you could use btrfs for that, but i’ve never tried it.
with DNF you can specify a specific version I assume the same is true for other packages. Proper backup solutions should give the same A/B upgrade path that Nix and other immutable distros enjoy. I like nix I really do I just would like to have a reason to go through the painful learning process.
From my very short experience so far. It really depends on how deep you want to go and what your use case is. If you just want to install applications and use them then it’s not really any different than installing them via terminal on other distros. You just make a list of the app names in a config file and then rebuild and can go about your day.
If I’d wanted to use my laptop with NixOS as my Fedora desktop then I’d be done setting it up 5min after I’ve installed the system. The only time I touch terminal on my Fedora system is when I turn on PC and check for updates because it’s faster than waiting for Software to refresh.
Probably the biggest benefit other than reproducibility is that you get immutability without reliance on flatpaks.
Is there a single thing nix does that isnt easier to do with a simple bash script applied over whatever your favorite distro is? Reproducible builds is all that comes to mind
Some things you could do is apply theming in an autistic nix way, configure some services to auto run and setup monitoring and reporting for them.
Yes, just enabling a service or program is one line in nix but the module behind can do a lot of things (install the package, create and enable the systemd service file, install and setup any db if needed or other service dependencies, set some default settings…). For some service that would be quite the bash script.
Also theming in nix is very easy for the apps supported by Stylix.
If you’re just using it to declare packages and some configs then yeah you could definitely run like a post-install script or something on top of a minimal distro. I’ve done this for a while when i was using Void. It’s get trickier though when you consider that nix can also lock your config at a specific version of all the software you have installed, which i don’t think can easily be done on the average distro. There’s also the rollbacks, though i suppose you could use btrfs for that, but i’ve never tried it.
with DNF you can specify a specific version I assume the same is true for other packages. Proper backup solutions should give the same A/B upgrade path that Nix and other immutable distros enjoy. I like nix I really do I just would like to have a reason to go through the painful learning process.
From my very short experience so far. It really depends on how deep you want to go and what your use case is. If you just want to install applications and use them then it’s not really any different than installing them via terminal on other distros. You just make a list of the app names in a config file and then rebuild and can go about your day.
If I’d wanted to use my laptop with NixOS as my Fedora desktop then I’d be done setting it up 5min after I’ve installed the system. The only time I touch terminal on my Fedora system is when I turn on PC and check for updates because it’s faster than waiting for Software to refresh.
Probably the biggest benefit other than reproducibility is that you get immutability without reliance on flatpaks.