What are the pros and cons of the different immutable distros?

const_void@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 66 points –
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Nixos

Pros

  • Delarative Config
  • largest package repos

Cons

  • poor documentation
  • cli and package management is in limbo with unstable flakes/cli

Poor documentation combined with the step learning curve is quite a problem imho.

This is what ultimately repelled me. I've installed it for a couple weeks, and while I appreciate what it's trying to do, the learning curve was not worth the effort. At least not yet

Flakes aren't really unstable, but a lot of documentation is based on the old way of doing things. Also, Nix(OS) has a steep learning curve.

To enable the use of flakes, you have to use the 'extra-expiremental-features flakes' flag.

Edit: Apparently they are called 'extra-expiremental-features' not 'extra-unstable-features'. Regardless the nix docs explicitly describe them as unstable here

https://nixos.org/manual/nix/unstable/contributing/experimental-features.html

They're "experimental" because the RFC wadn't approved IIRC, but everyone in the community (and the new documentation) talks about amd used the new commands.