NixOS

[Fireye]

I'm currently taking the effort to port my entire operating system from arch to nixos, as declarative system config is incredibly appealing to me, however the learning curve is completely bonkers lmao.

Right now I've gotten past bootloader config problems (which wasn't exactly nix's fault; I just wasn't totally familiar with nix scripting so my debugging efforts were moderately kneecapped), nix flakes (goddamn those took a while to wrap my brain around), and now I'm going to dive into home manager and try to transfer over all of my dotfiles from arch.

Any nix users here that can offer any advice, do's, don't's, etc...?

[TeaInTheMorning]

I'm currently taking the effort to port my entire operating system from arch to nixos, as declarative system config is incredibly appealing to me, however the learning curve is completely bonkers lmao.

Right now I've gotten past bootloader config problems (which wasn't exactly nix's fault; I just wasn't totally familiar with nix scripting so my debugging efforts were moderately kneecapped), nix flakes (goddamn those took a while to wrap my brain around), and now I'm going to dive into home manager and try to transfer over all of my dotfiles from arch.

Any nix users here that can offer any advice, do's, don't's, etc...?

Not a nix user but here to wish you luck!!!
Hope it goes well :3c

[Crazyroostereye]

I used NixOS for a while, last year. It is tho quite the Difficult thing to rap your head around. As you always need to do it the Nix way. Which is helpful, having your system easily configured. But also relearning everything. I failed at understanding it enough for my needs, and returned to Arch. But maybe someday I have the courage to retry it.

But I know you have more of a Developer background, maybe it is a bit easier for you. I am excited to hear about your Journey.

[Fireye]

Ok current status: finally got hone manager and the niri flake working.

A lot of the docs and resources expect a certain level of knowledge and familiarity with everything so they'll give code snippets but won't tell you where you're to put them, for example. I wouldn't recommend the average person do this at this point though. (Though that might change in the future).

I'm justifying the switch because I don't want to sysadmin two computers (shitty ahh 1135G7, iris graphics,16GB RAM laptop & 12700k, 3080, 64GB RAM tower). On nix I can make changes on machine A and have them replicate to B so I don't duplicate work or have completely different environments between the two. And it'll be really nice to never worry about breaking updates or a broken system ever again. The work has been moderately back breaking though XD.

Will update more later (and probably make a full blog post for fireye.coffee once I'm done lmao).

[TeaInTheMorning]

Ok current status: finally got hone manager and the niri flake working.

A lot of the docs and resources expect a certain level of knowledge and familiarity with everything so they'll give code snippets but won't tell you where you're to put them, for example. I wouldn't recommend the average person do this at this point though. (Though that might change in the future).

I'm justifying the switch because I don't want to sysadmin two computers (shitty ahh 1135G7, iris graphics,16GB RAM laptop & 12700k, 3080, 64GB RAM tower). On nix I can make changes on machine A and have them replicate to B so I don't duplicate work or have completely different environments between the two. And it'll be really nice to never worry about breaking updates or a broken system ever again. The work has been moderately back breaking though XD.

Will update more later (and probably make a full blog post for fireye.coffee once I'm done lmao).

Great to hear it is going well Fireye!!!

Also jeezum you have good computers :O

That one time config is really appealing >>