this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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I switched from Nixos to void Linux. Here's my experience so far. (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I hopped from arch (2010-2019) to Nixos (2019-2023). I had my issues with it but being a functional programmer, I really liked the declarative style of configuring your OS. That was until last week. I decided to try out void Linux (musl). I'm happy with it so far.

Why did I switch?

  1. Nix is extremely slow and data intensive (compared to xbps). I mean sometimes 100-1000x or more. I know it is not a fair comparison because nix is doing much more. Even for small tweaks or dependency / toolchain update it'll download/rebuild all packages. This would mean 3-10GB (or more) download on Nixos for something that is a few KB or MB on xbps.

  2. Everything is noticeably slower. My system used way more CPU and Ram even during idle. CPU was at 1-3% during idle and my battery life was 2 to 3.5h. Xfce idle ram usage was 1.5 GB on Nixos. On Void it's around 0.5GB. I easily get 5-7h of battery life for my normal usage. It is 10h-12h if I am reading an ebook.

Nix disables a lot of compiler optimisations apparently for reproducibility. Maybe this is the reason?

  1. Just a lot of random bugs. Firefox would sometimes leak memory and hang. I have only 8 GB of ram. WiFi reconnecting all the time randomly. No such issues so far with void.

  2. Of course the abstractions and the language have a learning curve. It's harder for a beginner to package or do something which is not already exposed as an option. (This wasn't a big issue for me most of the time.)

For now, I'll enjoy the speed and simplicity of void. It has less packages compared to nix but I have flatpak if needed. So far, I had to install only Android studio with it.

My verdict is to use Nixos for servers and shared dev environments. For desktop it's probably not suitable for most.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I just wanted something lightweight and fast. It was between alpine (gentoo based), void and artix (arch based). I decided to go for void because it's new and an independent distro. I'll try the other two some day.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I sense a dislike for systemd. :D Actually didn't know alpine is gentoo based. Thanks for your insight.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It is not. Alpine is independant and uses a ports-like packaging system.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

ports as in BSD?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I was just going off based on its history. It began based on gentoo. (Wikipedia) but yea it is independent now.