NixOS: Everything Everywhere All At Once

Alternate Title: NixOS: Stability on the Bleeding-Edge
One day, as happens now and then with a bleeding-edge rolling release distro, a systemd update reversed my mouse buttons.
The great thing about rolling-release and cutting-edge distributions like Arch Linux, is that you get to be a beta tester, whether you like it or not!
I thought this was the way it had to be on Linux: Stability or cutting-edge features, not both.
But that wasn't right at all, with NixOS you can have everything, everywhere all at once!

🖊️ Corrections are in the pinned ERRATA comment.

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[NoBoilerplate]

ERRATA
- 0:18 Misspelled "LINUX" in the title, classic me!
- Asahi USED to be arch-based, now fedora-based. Same problem, different flavour!
- The TOML examples shouldn't have semicolons at the end

[SmartassEyebrows]

Taking the Cloud world's "configuration as code" philosophy and applying it to an OS in this particular way is honestly brilliant.

[vimjoyer]

Thanks for the shoutout! I've been watching your channel for a long time, and I never thought I'd hear you recommend my video. Feels very surreal.

[jeiang]

I've been using NixOS for about 6 months now, and I love it. My favorite"feature" is impermanence, so my system rebuilds itself from fresh on every boot.

[blehbleh]

NixOS was a bit too limited for packages back when I first saw it in mid 2010s, but I think that graph and the annoyance of updating/keeping up with news for Arch might've just convinced me to switch

[Nicfallenangel]

12:53 "I'm sharing this just between you, and me, and 200, 000 of my closest friends." 😂 That was gold. And I've never thought of using TOML, YAML, or any other ML to generate config. That's an interesting approach to get around learning the syntax at first.

[thLaw]

Video suggestion: rapid prototyping in Rust. I love rust and colleagues comment all the time the amount of effort it requires to build even a proof of concept. Granted, rust forces you to do you due diligence before you can even try to run it. However, I would very much like to learn tips and techniques to easily do rapid development, cut some corners to get it going.

Some ideas: disallow optimized builds when corners are still cut, use todo!(), initially build everything with just traits and automocks and gradually implement them (feels like tdd without the tests, but still designed to be loosely coupled).

[DeerDesigner]

Small correction - Asahi USED to be arch-based, nowadays the official, blessed asahi distro is fedora-based

[cid-chan-]

Some nitpicks

- nixos-unstable has automated tests. In fact these tests cause nixos-unstable to lag behind master by up to one week if there are critical test failures, like rendering the system in an unbootable state, or similar problems. NixOS-stable works by freezing versions of critical system components, only selectively porting back versions where neccessary.

- Addendum: even the package definitions are tracked by git. There is also the nixos master branch. You dont want to use that branch ever directly. This one is the branch with 0 tests applied (except: is it valid nix code?)

- you can also configure your system using json.

[idkwtpaah]

You know that something is amazing when No Boilerplate covers it
NixOS rocks!

[DavidConnerCodeaholic]

As someone who’s basically only ever written a single RPM… writing pkgs in Nix and Guix is so unbelievably efficient in comparison. Linux would have to be ludicrous not to gravitate towards these solutions.

[Synthetica]

I've been running nixos as my main os since 2017, and I still have this original install 1000+ generations later.

[FreshSmog]

I think you forgot to mention another important part. Nix can be installed as just a package manager on any other distro and gets you much of the benefits of nixos on user packages. For average home users who don't configure systemd or manage user groups, the package manager might be all they need.


It's also why people use home-manager, it installs and configures home packages and works on both nixos and nix package manager.

[andylees]

FYI, arch based distros using btrfs for the root FS allow rollback to a previous state. This has saved my bacon on a few (important) occasions. Garuda is worthwhile checking out.

[scottmuc]

This was a really good overview! I'm nix-curious and am often confused on what exactly nix is... now I understand it's more than just 1 tool. The super-updated package repo has me sold. I used to think nix-folks just loved having everything locked down to a known good version and letting it stay that way. Now I understand that nix is a toolkit to help you never leave your packages, config, and dependencies stale.

[ejiek]

nvd - Nix/NixOS package version diff tool

This tool helps to see what actually changes within an update. After updating flake.lock or any other tempering with my config I run: ‘nixos-rebuild build --flake 'flake-path#' && nvd diff /run/current-system result’. It shows it all. Version changes, package and dependency changes.

[shawnmiguel]

I was just watching some past videos and wishing that you would make something covering Nix. Thanks man, your videos help me a lot.

[biscotty]

Great to see yet more vids on NixOS. For those wanting to try, I strongly suggest installing Nix on your current distro and/or NixOS in a VM. It will be way less frustrating. You can take advantage of many features of Nix without running NixOS itself. Ideally set up a system configured as you like with all you need in a VM, and use the configs to build your configured system right away when you do the real install. You won't have to redo anything, so no wasted time but a "safe" learning environment.

[RenderingUser]

NO WAY. I could have never expected this. I've taken a lot of interest in nix recently. Can't believe you covered it

[twenty-fifth]

0:35 Linx OS is a Linux distro that purrs when you pet the start button and roars mightly when you install a package 😂.

We have fun here at no boilerplate.