NixOS needs what is IMO the killer feature of Arch: the wiki.
Comprehensive documentation on not only the OS but the additional packages that we use is what drew me to Arch, and the thing that makes me swear in frustration whenever I have to use Ubuntu/Debian.
NixOS is an excellent OS that has the promise of being every bit as hackable as Arch, but far more stable. Problem is, configuration is very different and needs extensive documentation to reduce that friction point.
NixOS needs what is IMO the killer feature of Arch: the wiki.
NixOS has a killer feature which obviates a wiki for most such purposes: NixOS options. They document themselves!
You don’t need to look up a wiki on how to install and enable i.e. paperless and all the other services it depends on, you simply set services.paperless.enable and NixOS configures everything for you internally.
The option tells you roughly what it does internally and the other options provide pointers for things you might want to tweak about it. The services.paperless.extraConfig option for example tells you how to configure it (pointing to upstream documentation in this case) and even gives an example on what you might want to do.
Another example is how to install Steam. In Arch, the wiki must tell you all the manual steps required to enable multilib, install the steam package, install 32bit dependencies, yada yada.
In NixOS, you simply set programs.steam.enable = true;. Off to your games.
You wanna customise the Steam package to add additional flags, pass env vars or add additional packages your weird Linux-native indie game needs? programs.steam.package tells you how to do that right in the place where you do it.
While you’re looking for steam, you might also come across hardware.steam-hardware.enable which you need to set in order to make your Valve Index and Steam Controller work properly.
You wanna start Steam in a gamescope session right from the display-manager? programs.steam.gamescopeSession does it for you. No need to copy paste some snippet that you’ll instantly forget about and maybe breaks in a few months. programs.steam.gamescopeSession is maintained upstream by NixOS, so if it breaks, someone will go and fix that and nobody needs to adjust any of their copy-pasta because they’ll just update as they always do and it just starts working again.
None of this is perfect yet and the quality of documentation of NixOS options really varies but I think you get the idea here. I already rarely look at the NixOS wiki to configure my system because the system configuration tells me what I need to do already and this will only get better as options get refined.
the promise of being every bit as hackable as Arch
I don’t think it makes that promise and I don’t think it’s true.
NixOS is about doing things “properly”; applying software engineering to software environment management.
Whipping up a quick hack is much more complicated and time intensive on NixOS than doing so on Arch because it’s way more abstract. You can’t just quickly replace some binary with your own compiled one, you need to use NixOS’ systems to wire in the binary and build it with Nix to begin with.
Maintaining a system (even one with terrible hacks) is much simpler in NixOS however.
Yeah true, whenever I have problems with some packages like Wayland and its alternative Xorg tools or games, its Arch wiki that helps extremely to fix or understand the situation. Its like many experiences are combined and written in a simple language everyone can easily understand.
On Ubuntu for example, everything feels like its hardcoded, not the standard and its just not even documented. And the wiki has minimal info about the packages.
I’m new to NixOS, just installed it a few days ago, so I can’t say much about it’s pros and cons, but the installer was easy and I installed and booted into the new system very quickly. I think it might have been udpated in the past year, because I am watching a tutorial video from a year ago and he installs it via command line from the live iso.
edit: it also gave me a default configuration.nix which I’ve just been adding to (to get nginx with letsencrypt running, plus extra packages I wanted installed)
NixOS needs what is IMO the killer feature of Arch: the wiki.
Comprehensive documentation on not only the OS but the additional packages that we use is what drew me to Arch, and the thing that makes me swear in frustration whenever I have to use Ubuntu/Debian.
NixOS is an excellent OS that has the promise of being every bit as hackable as Arch, but far more stable. Problem is, configuration is very different and needs extensive documentation to reduce that friction point.
NixOS has a killer feature which obviates a wiki for most such purposes: NixOS options. They document themselves!
You don’t need to look up a wiki on how to install and enable i.e. paperless and all the other services it depends on, you simply set
services.paperless.enableand NixOS configures everything for you internally.The option tells you roughly what it does internally and the other options provide pointers for things you might want to tweak about it. The
services.paperless.extraConfigoption for example tells you how to configure it (pointing to upstream documentation in this case) and even gives an example on what you might want to do.Another example is how to install Steam. In Arch, the wiki must tell you all the manual steps required to enable multilib, install the steam package, install 32bit dependencies, yada yada.
In NixOS, you simply set
programs.steam.enable = true;. Off to your games.You wanna customise the Steam package to add additional flags, pass env vars or add additional packages your weird Linux-native indie game needs?
programs.steam.packagetells you how to do that right in the place where you do it.While you’re looking for
steam, you might also come acrosshardware.steam-hardware.enablewhich you need to set in order to make your Valve Index and Steam Controller work properly.You wanna start Steam in a gamescope session right from the display-manager?
programs.steam.gamescopeSessiondoes it for you. No need to copy paste some snippet that you’ll instantly forget about and maybe breaks in a few months.programs.steam.gamescopeSessionis maintained upstream by NixOS, so if it breaks, someone will go and fix that and nobody needs to adjust any of their copy-pasta because they’ll just update as they always do and it just starts working again.None of this is perfect yet and the quality of documentation of NixOS options really varies but I think you get the idea here. I already rarely look at the NixOS wiki to configure my system because the system configuration tells me what I need to do already and this will only get better as options get refined.
I don’t think it makes that promise and I don’t think it’s true.
NixOS is about doing things “properly”; applying software engineering to software environment management.
Whipping up a quick hack is much more complicated and time intensive on NixOS than doing so on Arch because it’s way more abstract. You can’t just quickly replace some binary with your own compiled one, you need to use NixOS’ systems to wire in the binary and build it with Nix to begin with.
Maintaining a system (even one with terrible hacks) is much simpler in NixOS however.
Yeah true, whenever I have problems with some packages like Wayland and its alternative Xorg tools or games, its Arch wiki that helps extremely to fix or understand the situation. Its like many experiences are combined and written in a simple language everyone can easily understand.
On Ubuntu for example, everything feels like its hardcoded, not the standard and its just not even documented. And the wiki has minimal info about the packages.
I think NixOS needs an approachable installer or config builder
I’m new to NixOS, just installed it a few days ago, so I can’t say much about it’s pros and cons, but the installer was easy and I installed and booted into the new system very quickly. I think it might have been udpated in the past year, because I am watching a tutorial video from a year ago and he installs it via command line from the live iso.
edit: it also gave me a default configuration.nix which I’ve just been adding to (to get nginx with letsencrypt running, plus extra packages I wanted installed)