For me, it felt like old times. Bringing up slackware, then bringing up redhat, then fighting in laptop Nvidia and AMD drivers. I was scary how much of my existing knowledge was useless though. If you install it by the book, you can’t even run a linked library.
I spent a couple of hundred hours learning how to configure it. I’ve been running it for around a year and a half. I’m still sub-par. First time around, 23.11, I installed home-manager as a flake. I got it up and running in a couple of hours, but managed to wedge myself when it was time for updates. I had written just enough weird nix language to make my configs not work in 24.05. I could get the OS to come up, but not home-manager. I started fresh, taking old configs item by item and re-implemented them via the docs fresh.
When I got a new laptop, I booted off the USB, copied my home folder and grabbed configuration.nix and home.nix and it all just magically worked.
That said, NGL, 25.05 has me a bit worried :) But at least I don’t have to fight Wayland this time.
That’s way, way more time and effort than I’m willing to waste on getting my computer up and running, and I still fail to see any real benefit over copying my Arch home folder and reinstalling what I need from Pacman/AUR. If I had to set up dozens of computers at a time then yes, absolutely, Nix would be perfect!
Came here to say NixOS too. The idea behind it is neat but the implementation is the most obtuse Rube Goldberg machine I can imagine.
For me, it felt like old times. Bringing up slackware, then bringing up redhat, then fighting in laptop Nvidia and AMD drivers. I was scary how much of my existing knowledge was useless though. If you install it by the book, you can’t even run a linked library.
I spent a couple of hundred hours learning how to configure it. I’ve been running it for around a year and a half. I’m still sub-par. First time around, 23.11, I installed home-manager as a flake. I got it up and running in a couple of hours, but managed to wedge myself when it was time for updates. I had written just enough weird nix language to make my configs not work in 24.05. I could get the OS to come up, but not home-manager. I started fresh, taking old configs item by item and re-implemented them via the docs fresh.
When I got a new laptop, I booted off the USB, copied my home folder and grabbed configuration.nix and home.nix and it all just magically worked.
That said, NGL, 25.05 has me a bit worried :) But at least I don’t have to fight Wayland this time.
That’s way, way more time and effort than I’m willing to waste on getting my computer up and running, and I still fail to see any real benefit over copying my Arch home folder and reinstalling what I need from Pacman/AUR. If I had to set up dozens of computers at a time then yes, absolutely, Nix would be perfect!
that’s fair