submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
 

I made the unfortunate post about asking why people liked Arch so much (RIP my inbox I'm learning a lot from the comments) But, what is the best distro for each reason?

RIP my inbox again. I appreciate this knowledge a lot. Thank you everyone for responding. You all make this such a great community.

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[–] 4 points 1 year ago

Some more points about Nix:

  • It's a fast way to get to a specific setup, like a particular DE or Vulkan gaming support, thanks to abstraction that NixOS modules provide
  • There are tons of packages
  • Because packages are installed by adding a config entry you don't accumulate random software you forgot you installed
  • Immutable updates and rollbacks - this is similar to benefits of atomic ostree distros, but the nix solutions are more general, so you have one system that does more things with a consistent interface
    • in addition to updating the base system, rollbacks also roll back user-installed packages, and configurations if those are managed via Nix
    • devshells provide per-directory packages and configuration using the same package repos as the host system, without needing to manage docker images
  • Nix is portable - much of what it does on NixOS can also be used in other distros, or even on Macos or Windows with the Linux subsystem
    • Configurations often combine NixOS and Home Manager parts. The Home Manager part can be used à la carte on other OSes is a way that is fully isolated from the host OS package management. For example on Macos this is a much nicer alternative to Homebrew.
    • devshells also work on other OSes
  • similar to Guix - but NixOS uses systemd, and is (from what I understand) more tolerant of non-free software (whether these are pros or cons is up to individual interpretation)
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