I want to but COSMIC DE.
You can absolutely install Cosmic with Nix
Don’t listen to him! Just start using Nix to manage dependencies and dev environments for your projects but keep your OS the same until you are really good at Nix
How does that work? Let’s say I’m on pop os developing a thing, how would I manage deps and dev envs with nix then? In a VM or what?
I’m a Linux nerd, but I totally don’t get nix. Tried to install some nix package manager on my Debian based distro and it was completely broken (the nix thing, not my os)
I um… didn’t get started yet. But a colleague demoed it to my and it’s kind of between virtual environments and containers, if you’re familiar with Python.
You write a Nix config and specify exactly which versions of which package you want to have. Reproducibility is the main selling point of Nix. Things don’t just break overnight because a dependency of a dependency of a dependency got upgraded. You can always go back to exactly what it was like before. Guaranteed. That’s pretty cool.
Ok so you got that config, then you build and activate it, and it replaces your shell. You enter the Nix shell. You still have access to all your files and directories, but your Nix config controls exactly which versions of your tools you have. gcc, npm, python, maven, whatever you use.
You can see why this makes people want to build an immutable OS.
The main drawback of Nix is that it has a bit of a learning curve. Hence why I haven’t started yet. Maybe it’s time though.
Yeah, you want to sniff nix first before you mainline nixos.
Nah, best way to learn is to fuck your shit up until you fucked it back into a usable state
So, I’m an arch-btwistan, what does nixos do for a gamer/youtuber/low-tier-wannabe-musician? Legit asking, because I really don’t know what makes nixos tick, and the (very little) I’ve read doesn’t really explain the benefits of it
Very well built patches and ways to share them. This is a good thing for gaming as we can try bleeding edge like Arch. But without having to rely on AUR or scripts to copy locally. Thanks to Nix Flakes you simply reference the flake someone shared (after double checking what is in it) and rebuild a NixOS derivation and voila, patch installed. I installed a complete SteamOS in 1 minute with this, reboot and everything works. Even with your locally signed in Steam account 👌
