The main difference of NixOS to other distros is that you configure your system declaratively. This means that installed system settings (e.g. user accounts, enabled drivers, etc.) programs and potentially also configuration for individual programs is all defined in a single place. The disadvantage of this is that a lot of stuff works differently than on “normal” distros and that it tends to have a rather steep learning curve. Unless you’re prepared to invest a significant amount of time into it, you should not install NixOS.

That being said, the topic is a lot more complex (for example, one can also use the Nix package manager on other distros than NixOS), so if you’re interested, here is some more discussion on the topic:

• https://lemmy.world/post/198362
• https://sh.itjust.works/post/223521

The reason I really like NixOS is it’s by nature very robust. Your config is the almost universal truth about what’s installed on your machine and if it works

For example, if I make some change that breaks my whole system, I simply boot off the last working build, then revert my config to the previous version in git

Also, if there’s a package in the nix package manager you can say with 99% certainty it will just work out of the box, and if it doesn’t there’ll be a config option you can enable to get it to work

Also also if you move to a new machine you can copy over your config and the machine is built up just how you like it right out of the gate

Also also also if you do software dev you can have development environments that have all the packages you need for that project and only those packages

Also also also also you’re not gonna run into the issue later down the line of having loads of random shit installed on your system in 3 different package managers and 9 different places, cleaning up your machine is as simple as just removing the entries from your application list

Stupidly easy to install things too. If you want to install gnome desktop as an example it’s as simple as adding

services.xserver.enable = true; services.xserver.displayManager.gdm.enable = true; services.xserver.desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;

To your config

I wonder in practice how easy it is to copy your nix config to another machine. Sounds amazing but aren’t the configurations very hardware dependent?