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Comment by thrance | Hacker News Reader

I think it makes sense? You probably get an easier time reproducing a config on thousands of devices using NixOS?

it makes so much sense. a small team of experts maintaining a rock-solid base configuration providing the essentials, which can then be built on top of for agency/department or even personal specifics - all declarative, immutable, cachable, testable. I can't think of a better tool for the job.

As a downside, any change to software, version updates, keeping things secure now depends on the team is experts. Most are easy, some are hard (e.g. new software now requires a new Swift version - one person motivated enough to do that project has been pushing it for months), some are annoying (patch to libc means you're re-downloading your whole system).

As a positive thing, maybe at least nixos will get a serious security pipeline rather than the current best-effort community approach.

Well that was the whole problem to begin with! A lack of experts. Hence they went with IBM and MicroSlop. These guys are late.

buildroot

Golden image deployments and netboot have been around for ages. If you want an unified system and control the infrastructure, it doesn't really matter which system you use.

I'm not sure why they chose nix. But it does make it easier to carry local patches than a lot of other systems. I hope they succeed.

The one that makes it trivial to carry over local patches is Gentoo. I carry a set of patches to every new computer and update them whenever neccesary. No overlay yet :P

I've never had a Nix user actually able to explain why they use it in a way that coherently makes sense because it's a cult. You buy into it before know anything about it.

On many operating systems you keep accumulating junk around your system which become ever harder to clean up. Many techy people re-install their system every few years to clean it up, many non-techy people simply watch their system become ever slower and filled with cruft until they end up buying a new device.

This is the main issue NixOS solves for me. I don't have systemd units or cronjobs or random config files spread across the system. I have one config file/directory, which contains everything.

You're overstating the problem to the point I have more doubts than before I read your argument.

My beef with nix is the arcane syntax to get anything done. Yes, it's documented. No, it doesn't help that it reads like one of those strict, convoluted standards written by a committee of experts.

It's not arcane. You're just unfamiliar with it. It's pretty close to any lazy functional language.

Also what causes problems for others may not be the same thing that causes problems for you. You could try accepting others' experiences.

Who are you to tell me what to do? At best, you're being a hypocrit.

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