NixOS Has One BIG Problem

Today I talk about my first week on NixOS. I have positive and negative things to say.
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#ramble #nixos #thelinuxcast

[enkiimuto]

Nix config might be a "eh it is okay" for regular desktop usage but for IT managing desktops or any dev work with multiple servers is just magic.

[MichaelWilliams-lrmb]

As a NixOS user, I agree on the documentation.

I've found videos people have made on Youtube about NixOS more useful than the official documentation. Also, I've run into good stuff on Reddit that has helped. I think most, if not all, NixOS users will agree the documentation needs a lot of improvement.

[Gaivs]

I love when the documentation is: "For more options, look at the nix file" and then you need a PhD in functional programming languages to understand the nix file. Don't get me wrong, I love using NixOS, and I'm at a level where I can write basic nix files, flakes etc., but man do you get a lot of boilerplate in some of these files that make it a mess to understand.

[MichaelWilliams-lrmb]

The paths are different because everything you install is isolated.

Oh, if you do any bash scripting, make sure you use the shebang

#!/usr/bin/env bash

because bash doesn't exist at /bin/bash

Anyway, kudos to you for looking at this. Yes, the process will take a while. I'm still learning NixOS myself.

[BeOnlyChaos]

It's important to understand what nixos is trying to achieve, then it makes a lot more sense why they do things different.

The reason they don't usually the standard paths (aka FHS) is that nix packages should not interfere with each other and use only the dependencies they require. If they did use the standard location, some package could come along and install a different version of a library there and then boom, we've broken something else.

NixOs just never breaks due to the way it does dependencies. I used Arch Linux for years and got used to the fact that once in a while, you might have to spend a few hours figuring out why your system broke.

Even if NixOS did break, I could simply reboot to the previous generation and have a perfectly working system again.

As a dev, the nicest feature for me, is the ability to have all the dependencies for my project specified in the project. If I need a certain python version and packages for one project, I can have that. A different project can specify a totally different version and they don't interfere with each other.

Nix certainly has a step learning curve, but in most cases it's worth it.

[asdfghyter]

7:25 yeah, in general, if you want to install anything that would typically require configuration it’s worth searching the config options docs for the thing and see if there’s an option for it. it’s often easier than the traditional way to do it, since it’s usually just a single line
`whatever.thing.enable = true;`
and that will both install and set all the necessary config for you. but yes, it can be annoying to not be able to do things in the way you’re used to

[blarghblargh]

I really appreciate that you spend time to actually fully investigate something and let it take as long as it's going to take, instead of taking a fixed amount of time and calling it done, with the expectation that others are only going to spend that long.

[berndborte]

I totally get the "NixOS does everything different" criticism. It drastically increases the learning curve and the spotty documentation really doesn't help. But the approach of allowing for declarative reproducibility kinda requires this. It's a really unique distribution with unique takes and solutions for unique problems. For me, this was a game changer, even though I still have some work ahead to fully reap the benefits. It's also the first distro where I'll gladly just auto-update.

[DaKingof]

nix-shell is just a temp environment that has acess to the rest of your system. Programmers use it to create an environment where they can have all of their goodies set up that the system itself is not aware of. This means you can have all of your dependencies and PATHs set up in a specific way for that specific directory you are working in. It's a dream for re-creating programming environments on multiple machines or to share between friends/colleagues. You can also install programs inside of it for testing. Once the shell is closed the program disapears like it was never installed in the first place.

[benjy]

I agree the biggest problem with nixos is the lack of documentation, it took me ages to figure out how to make a custom xsession for lxqt that didn't install openbox, it took a bunch of googling and experimentation, but on the plus side is if you screw up then you can just reboot into the previous working system, just keep a back up of your working config file, you can even save config files for certain setups, like a config file for lxqt, or kde, or a specific window manager, I also installed it on my mothers laptop because I know I can upgrade it without fear of a breakage resulting in trouble shooting or a reinstall, plus you don't need to use btrfs to have that feature.

[SpaceEndeavour]

The unstable branch of NixOS is a rolling release like Arch Linux and receives packages first and has a greater potential to break. The stable release has releases with security updates every 6 months, kinda like the interim releases of Ubuntu. If you want, you can set up your system to pull specific packages from unstable. I personally have my system pull most packages from stable while having a few select packages, like Hyprland, from unstable.

[pauldufresne]

You do more configuration than most people I think... and so I believe you already have come to as much stuff than I did in 2 or 3 years of sparingly using NixOS.

[imperativeemarketing]

For some reason I've watched your videos before. I think they were about LMDE 6 or Debian 12 and they were interesting enough for me to watch the whole thing. I've been hearing and watched vids about NixOS and you'rs popped up in the sidebar, so I watched the whole thing because I found it interesting so I liked your video. I don't have a lot of time to learn NixOS, but I'm wanting to. I see it's good to have probly more than 100GB for the "/" root partition, so I'll probly want to purchase another NVME M.2 drive for my desktop so I can play with NixOS. Thanks for the video. Great Job. You answered some of my prevalent questions. I'll be looking for your NixOS 6 month review, and I'll probly toss you a few bones of Patreon. Thanks

[anonymouscommentator]

this was interesting to see, thank you very much! ) agree that you have to re-learn a lot of habits when switching to NixOS, but I think we often forget that people coming from windows to even a beginner linux distro will probably have a way harder learning curve. We are quick to say that the transition to linux is easy while we ourselves find us somewhat struggeling when switching to exotic distros like NixOS.

[thingsiplay]

One of the things I would love to do is using the Nix config file from my main machine, to create a Virtual Machine and experiment stuff with it. This could be cool for developers. Also the ability to have different config files with different desktop environments is very nice too. I'm intrigued by the Nix concept and will dive into it in the future.

[viniciusmelquiades]

I'm a new user of NixOS, and I agree with you on a lot of things.
Documentation is terrible, but I had friends and other YT videos teach me the basics. I'm also a noob with Linux in general, and don't understand most config files, which is what I think made NixOS much better for me, since I only needed to learn one config language, but it also forced me to understand how some things work for me to set it up the way I want to. And I kind of learned to use the search website to find the config I want.
For the fonts, I don't know what to tell you, they seem to work for me (Fira code with nerd fonts, if I'm not mistaken). I can take a look at my config if you want to.

I'm looking forward for your review (even though this is the first video I saw from you), and I hope I get to learn something

[aldosierra]

Check in the font cheat sheet if the icon you're trying to use is still there, because nerd font remove a lot of icons

[angry.sparrow]

Nice video. Thanks for sharing. Please give updates from your experience, just like this, before the long term review! Cheers

[keilmillerjr]

Excellent video. Thank you. Im an arch linux user. I like the concept of a configuration file for packages and settings. However, I am not thrilled about the isolation of packages & dependancies. Nix does not use the Heiarchy Filesystem Standard. That blows my mind. Would the application i created be able to install via a normal makefile? I will have to try it in a vm. I expect it being different will yield to fustration.

[jeffrodrequez]

Arch+Hyprland (mostly) user for the last 5 months or so, but I've been considering diving into NixOS. Life has been a bit too busy and I knew going in that I would need to allocate a LOT of time to figure it all out, though and this just kind of confirmed that for me. Be interesting to watch your journey. Thank you for sharing!