> NixOS is awful except for everything else out there.
Except Qubes OS that allows using original GNU/Linux distributions virtualized with a convenient interface.
Except Qubes OS that allows using original GNU/Linux distributions virtualized with a convenient interface.
But at the end of the day, those VM images, and any snapshots made, are opaque blobs of bits. Whatever shape they're in, you have nowhere to look to determine why they are the way they are--no recipe for recreating that state and sharing it with others (unless you want to share it ALL with others, and then only with others on the same architecture). You've got a lot of control, but only over these chunks of whatever happened to be there at that time.
You're sort of trapped in one dimension. You can use snapshots to move backwards and forwards in time, but if the following paths don't lead to the same system state in some subtle way you're not going to know about the difference:
path one:
> add foo | add bar | remove foo
path two:
> add bar
Did you consider to use the Salt Stack, which is integrated into Qubes? https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/saltstack-challenges-and-experi...
Do Qubes users treat Salt Stack formulae as packages these days?
That’s the same idea that Docker has — containers don’t solve packaging, they only push the problem down a layer.
I run Fedora and Debian, but you can run many other distros: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/#operating-system-guides.
> they only push the problem down a layer
This is an interesting interpretation. For me Qubes fully solves, e.g., both the problems of system stability and flexibility.
I am curious, what is inconvenient in it for you?