Jump from Arch to NixOS?

andrew0@lemmy.dbzer0.com to Linux@lemmy.ml – 52 points –

As the title implies, should I do it? I love Arch so far, and I can fix most issues that pop out. However, I sometimes wish to start fresh without too much hassle, but I get a feeling NixOS isn't as mature as Arch.

Have any of you used both, and if so, what do you miss from Arch? What are you grateful for in NixOS?

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I haven't used NixOS but it does sound interesting. From what I gather all you need is your configuration.nix file to rebuild the entire system the same as it was before. I think for sure the biggest thing I would miss is the AUR.

Not a Nix user, but IIRC nixpkgs is actually bigger than the AUR by a long shot.

That is good to know, but if you are missing something it seems you need to package it yourself. I'm sure I could do that, just not sure I really want to be doing it.

In practice it takes a long time to build a config for absolutely everything in your system at least from my experience of it

There are a few things I've not bothered to put in the config like wallpaper, gtk theme, macros (though I do want to put macros in declaratively because it feels like missing a limb not having them)

System setup wise you can completely wipe the machine and have it back up to where you left it in 20 mins or so

Well nixpkgs and NUR should be big enough, and you can just quite literally use Nix to grab stuff from Github anyways.