That Computer Scientist - Nix is the New Arch!

uthredii@programming.dev to Linux@lemmy.ml – 95 points –
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It's distro-agnostic because Arch does very little to modify packages when they're put in the repos, which means they'll line up with the packages own man page & readme. The issue comes when opinionated distros modify things like command syntax, etc file locations and default behaviour.

If NixOS is similarly unopinionated, it'd only really have to document its own system layer, but my point is that Arch being guaranteed to reflect a well documented system is what drew me to it.

The way in which NixOS works in regards to packaging, locations of config files and others makes it very opinionated imo. You have to do it the nix way and trying the "normal" way doesn't work in most cases.

Nothing wrong with having a canonical way to configure things, but if it's not excellently documented people are going to try doing it the wrong way and get frustrated.