Jump from Arch to NixOS?
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've also been distro-hopping, but settled on NixOS. I find it very clean, you know exactly where your (system-level) configuration files are (...and could even manage user-level config files using home-manager). There is a stable branch, which is, well, stable. And even if it wasn't, you can rollback the system at any point, which is trivial (just select a different generation during boot).
One of the biggest advantages for me is universal reproducible working environments. Using Nix+direnv, I can lock all tools (make, gcc, JupyterLab, Python, Julia) that I'm using in a project to specific versions (and upgrade/rollback). I can install programs/libraries in a
nix shelland they will be removed on the next garbage collection. Upgrades are extremely safe: I once had a problem with RAM that corrupted a lot of my files during an upgrade. Nix can detect and repair this.Downside is that Nix doesn't follow FHS, so some programs need a little help, for example by Nix'
steam-run.Do you mind me asking what FHS means in this context?
FHS is the filesystem hierarchy standard than Linux and most Unix/Unix-like systems use. The Wikipedia entry has a good simple explanation. The full standard can be found here. NixOS does not use this standard, as it's not compatible with many features Nix offers.