Why do you use the distro you use?
-
I've found it can be easier to manage what you have installed, since you can just look at that list and go "oh, why do I still have xyz installed, idek what that does anymore"
While it sounds sexy and attractive... Not sure the amount of time needed to configure your NixOS is worthwhile. (Except if you have time to spare and want that learning experience !)
Just put everyhting In your personal notes and you have a similar "feature"?
The configuration of nix is not the time consuming part, most of the time it's faster than other distro if you are a developer.
The time consuming part is having an issue with a niche package, the only doc you have is the code and random github issue from 3 years ago that don't mirror your config, and the nix evaluation doesn't tell you which part of the config is the problem. -
Is the restoration method mentioned here really only achievable via nixos? How can you be so confident that you are truly reobtaining an "exact same system"?
Nixos consistently intrigues me because of what it seems to be accomplishing but I can never dive in because there seems to also be many warnings about the investment required and the potential for other more complicated and really nuanced drawbacks to arise.
Give it to me straight--is it offering a new approach of stability with the emphasis on reproducibility? If I'm a gentoo enjoyer hardset in my ways, what could I stand to gain in the nixos/guix realm?
Your personal files e.g. ~/Documents are not recreated, you'll still need backups of those.
caveats are you've got to use:
- home-manager to generate your dotfiles.
- something akin to sops to generate and securely store your private keys and secrets.
But all this can be written in the one flake, so yes
nixos-install --flake <GIT URL>#<HOSTNAME>
Is sufficient for me to rebuild my desktop, laptop or server from the same repository. -
Is there an official build for general release, or are you running a steam image built for a handheld?
Yep! It's the SteamOS 3 beta... It's got some bugs and some weirdness to it, but it's not terrible at all
