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Good bye NixOS, Hello Debian (Again)!
(karl-voit.at)
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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2025
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Linux
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I feel NixOS shines more on a server or specific setups. It's kind of meant for development also and occasionally you'll see some flakes or CI workflows in some project repositories. Idk I have a shell with a fhs environment and pip but it took some extra steps to get numpy, tensorflow and all C/C++ dependencies working but now I just use that for the Python stuff. And we have Distrobox, Docker/Podman... But yeah, I've invested more time in NixOS config and packaging than I'm willing to admit. Not only is it necessary to learn the functional programming language to write the declarative config... You'll also have to learn how a million of gears hook into each other to make things happen in the background. It's often not possible to do simple things without that additional (very specific) background knowledge.
"Not only is it necessary to learn the functional programming language to write the declarative config"
Holy shit haha! I've never actually looked into NixOS but this right here tells me it isn't for me.
I get that this seems very intimating, but if you've ever used more than three programming languages in your life, I believe you won't have much to learn.
I can mimic the syntax and I very roughly understand how the import system works. But I don't know Nix! Yet I haven't had any trouble language wise over the last few years.
In my experience most of the "code" you write is package names and those can be copied from search.nixos.org.
In that sense I'm effectively using it as a markup language and I don't think anyone has ever gotten discouraged by having to "learn" YAML, just so they can write a config file for some piece of software they want to use.
Something that I would take as discouragement is the state of the documentation. It has been improving to a usable level in some areas but other areas are heavily outdated or just plain missing.
I'm not a programmer. My brain just doesn't work that way. I wish it did. I've tried teaching myself Python, and I took a semester of Java. I understand pretty much zero.
I don't understand why some people insist on recommending NixOS as a first Linux distro. It's so far from the norm and beginner friendliness they must surely be joking.
I've been using Linux since 2007, and have tried many distros. I'm very happy with (and recommend) Linux Mint Debian Edition.