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Jump from Arch to NixOS? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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As the title implies, should I do it? I love Arch so far, and I can fix most issues that pop out. However, I sometimes wish to start fresh without too much hassle, but I get a feeling NixOS isn't as mature as Arch.

Have any of you used both, and if so, what do you miss from Arch? What are you grateful for in NixOS?

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[–] 14 points 3 years ago (16 children)

NixOS is as mature as arch, I'd say, but because of its nature it has issues here and there, but rarely so.

That said, the learning curve for nix/nixos is very very very steep, so good luck learning. It took me a while for me to use it nicely, and even then, I'm nothing more than a beginner. Even so, I'm quite comfortable and pretty much can't use any other linux distro.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    If nixos has been around this long how come it's only now starting to pick up in popularity?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Documentation is crap, but has been getting much better recently. Companies are also starting to use NixOS in production and are making contributions. The low friction ARM development process becomes more relevant every day.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    That explains it, documentation is ok but not nearly as good as arch's, feels like it takes a lot of googling

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (8 children)

    I don't get why everyone says it's so bad, you get a decent starter config and to install stuff you just add one line to it

    Installed it bare metal on a Friday and was up and running by Monday

    By no means a master of it but the config is pretty intuitive generally speaking

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    For many it's a radical change in paradigm, and I assume many just want to understand it well

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Fair enough to be honest when I jumped in I dual booted with windows so always had a safety net (also was experimenting on my laptop before moving to my PC)

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    I never went back to windows. I had my stuff in a separate partition so when I went back to Fedora or Arch, I had my stuff there

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Tbh same, I only ever went back to windows when I absolutely needed something to work immediately for something work related (my manager does not have much patience for my antics with technology when it doesn't go 100% smoothly)

    My PC which is now purely for personal use I just completely wiped and replaced, didn't even keep the old disk contents because it was full of years worth of windows usage detrius

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    That's true for the configuration.nix. I still cannot fully wrap my head around using Nix Flakes for managing my nixos configuration, home manager and overlaying or creating packages. My setup so far works, but I still don't feel like I fully understand it.

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