Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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For those who like a video format, I found this introduction quite informative.
Glancing over the website, I thought it's an immutable OS, like Fedora Silverblue. I could imagine that it might be cool to use with Ansible and stuff. But for an average user? I can't really see the advantages in respect to the work you have to put in.
It is an immutable distro, altough it isn't image-based like Fedora's rpm-ostree.
NixOS basically replaces Ansible because the Nix package manager achieves the same goals already (configuration, deployment, ...).
But I agree, the work necessary to put into this non-standard distro makes it hard to recommend for a casual user.
It's been around for like a decade, but was recently make more approachable by offering a graphical installer.
I ran it in a VM for several months and was underwhelmed. Sticking with Fedora.
Answering that question fully would require a PHD thesis.
Perhaps you could narrow down your question a little?
I'm really not sure of where this would be anymore usefull than a simple bash script to install all packages you need since it doesn't do configs and that rollbacks are supported by some filesystems already. Also Having version specific dependencies is already a thing for flatpacks and such
There is a world of difference between a bash script and something like NixOS. The most important difference is that with NixOS something that you don't specify won't be there. Whereas a bash script (or other config management tools like Puppet, Chef or Ansible) only mutate things listed.
So it is very easy to write a script like:
ensure_installed python3
write_file /etc/foo.cfg 'thing = 7'
chgrp users /mnt/backups
But if you remove ensure_installed python3 it will stay installed. You can try to be very careful and always add ensure_not_installed python3 but this is both error prone and dead code as soon as you run it. I used to have a script like this and I used each of configuration management tools mentioned above and always ran into these issues. The exact error flow would be something like this:
- Enable/setup some service A that pulls in package X.
- Disable service A or remove package X because it isn't needed anymore.
- Write configuration for service B.
- Forget to add
ensure_installed Xbut it works anyways because X is still installed from step 1.
Now you have a non-reproducible config because if you try to re-install or setup service B on a new machine it won't work because X isn't present. This may sound like a niche problem but I ran into it almost every time I tried to bring up a new machine using my config.
It is still possible to do this in NixOS as it isn't completely reproducible (you can have mutable state) but in general it is much harder because any configuration that isn't specified doesn't exist. As soon as you remove package X or service Y from your config it is removed from your system. I've been using NixOS for 8 years now and this problem is mostly gone. It is definitely more reproducible than bash scripts and it has a tangible effect on my workflow.
I wrote a blog post about it a long time ago but the core is still relevant: https://kevincox.ca/2015/12/21/service-management-with-nixos/.