Never Ever Use NixOS

I've been a Nix OS desktop user since about a year. There are plenty of problems with the operating system, and some of the criticism voiced in this post is valid, but a lot of it could be expressed in a better way, and some I don't agree with.

E.g. kernel updates requiring updates to various system packages is a legitimate issue of Nix OS. It's because upgrading the kernel also upgrades the kernel headers, and a lot of stuff uses those. I think on other distros they just compile packages with older header versions and there is no problem. This issue is not isolated to kernels though, it's about anything that communicates over a dynamic boundary. E.g. glibc.

I fully agree with the system requirements point, and have to add that keeping a system up to date creates a lot of network and hard disk movement compared to other distros. Downloading and deleting multiple gigabytes per week is normal.

The documentation point is spot on, it'd be really great if it could be improved.

I can't agree with the criticism about the determinism. It seems he parades an obscure bug around. It's not perfect, so? It's way better than the alternatives.

This might have been a nice article to read. But after reading just the first paragraph I got unclosable overlay advertisements blocking out 80% of the screen making it impossible to continue reading.

Seeing this more and more often nowadays. No matter how good the article, if I cannot read it I won’t stick around.

Sorry dude if you want your rant to have any credibility maybe remove the thousands of ads and newsletter annoying pop up ? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> Determinism

Except not. I don't think "determinism" was ever an explicit goal of Nix. The sales pitch on their site is "learn how to make reproducible, declarative and reliable systems".

Nix takes very much a worse-is-better Unix approach. It aims to unify the mess of package management of Unix distributions and language runtimes in a reliable and easy-to-use way, but it doesn't aim to solve the computing world's problems in some quixotic quest for "purity".

Perhaps the complaints are valid, but why not conclude that "the devs should fix this and that" rather than "never use it"?

this article is one guy saying that the wheel he uses (but did not invent) is better than the one invented by the guy down the street.

Not a NixOS user, but I use nix packages for while now. Well, it works for me. I didn't have any big issues with it so far. I like the declarative way of list packages I want to install. As well it it easy to have the same setup between different mashines, you just need to share that file.

I've never used it, just been reading with interest about it here on HN.

From what I can gather the majority of the complaint in the article is around Nix itself used on different platforms, rather than around the NixOS distribution?

How can missing Windows support be a point against NixOS?

Or have I misunderstood what NixOS is?

This is awful. The exact same content could've been written in a "I never want to use NixOS again" way and be much more honest and much less hostile. I just don't see the point, why so angry?

Perhaps Andrei could take a look at Guix as an alternative? https://guix.gnu.org/

Packer + cloud-init seems like a better alternative than docker

Again someone flagged the article. Flag is meant for abusive or inappropriate material, not a special super-downvote option.

What's with the extremism lately?

nix is to system management what haskell is to programming...something that intermediate developers will quickly decide solves all problems, but in reality only solves some of its own problems and creates too many other problems. the advocacy for nix is a carbon copy of haskell advocacy from years ago...intermediate devs who repeat the same hype but don't actually put the tool to serious use

the nix language just doesn't need to exist at all. you have to wonder just how bug-ridden a PL with almost no users is...this is what is holding your system together!

using nix with scripting languages is beyond painful, just look up the gymnastics required. losing your sanity is fully transactional!

you can brick a system with a legit nix config, I've done it

you have to reinvent most basic management tools and you can't use cloud services as they are all docker-based and will almost certainly never offer nix support.

etc etc

want rollback? just reinstall debian from scratch, its about the same time commitment.

just as with haskell, nothing can stop the nix hype machine and you just have to wait for the brigade to fail on its own and silently move on

This is just an uninformed rant.