Link: https://pierrezemb.fr/posts/nixos-good-bad-ugly/
Tags: #nix
I'm the kind of guy who's definitely very prone to distro-hopping, but somehow I found out about NixOS when first installing WSL and never felt the urge to try anything else. Nix and Nix-like systems are also everywhere around tech communities online since I first started entering the space. Maybe it's just confirmation bias, but I never see as much content on HN/Lobste.rs about, say, Gentoo or Void Linux. There's some stuff about Debian here and there, but I don't think Debian is really bringing a lot of new ideas to the table. I'd love to see some data about this, especially since these systems are not really popular when you think about it. Maybe their users like to write blog posts. Maybe it's so rewarding and so frustrating that they feel like they should write blog posts and tell everyone about it. Maybe the industry is, for some reason, being more aware of the issues of software reproducibility?
Anyway, I absolutely adore Nix, it completely changed my relationship with computers, and I also hate it so much I'm seriously thinking about migrating to Guix System, because I love their work and because of politics and because Nix-the-language is awful and because I actually... sort-of-agree with their philosophy? It's definitely not pragmatic, but unfortunately I was also born an idealist. It's a shame that hardware that can run 100% free systems are either shit or prohibitively expensive.