Arch is a gateway drug to NixOS

[RandomThoughts3]

I’m not sure I agree with the article.

Arch is especially nice because it has best in class documentation and vanilla packages. The installation is a bog standard chroot and use package manager like Gentoo had for ages or an old school Debian. Arch is nice because it’s as vanilla as a Linux distribution can be.

NixOS is the polar opposite of that: basically no documentation, weird behaviours everywhere, custom configuration, custom file system. Pretty much as far removed from Arch as something can be.

[mattpallissard]

Right, plus arch is rolling release which lends itself to never reinstalling the OS.

The installation on my laptop is on its 4th hardware refresh. Rsync or brtfs send to a new box, modify the partition UUIDs, rebuild the initial ram disk, and you're on you're merry way.

[dscottboggs]

Yeah. As someone trying to find the time to migrate back to Arch from NixOS... I understand how Arch drives you to want to make things bespoke and just so and reproduceable, but NixOS adds a ton of complexity and problems without ever really getting there.

[keltor]

Arch is something a fairly non DIY user can easily conquer and use for many years and it will just work. As long as they don't choose to do anything exotic, they can use it basically forever.

NixOS is nothing like that, there's limited docs, the docs are sometimes just RTFM that links to another RTFM and oh yeah don't be afraid of breaking userspace because userspace is doing something wrong. It's fine for some of us who can of course get shit done.

Ultimately, I think some subset of Arch users who really wanted to be Gentoo users but weren't because "drama" and then NixOS scratches that itch.

[fullsend]

As always in Linux at home, “something exotic” here means using Bluetooth at all.

[wasted_intel]

I also think NixOS is more targeted towards developers. It’s one thing to learn the syntax, APIs, and abstractions of Nix/NixOS. It’s another to stack all of that on top of learning programming in general.

[djaouen]

Guix System is my happy medium between non-functional Arch and documentation-less NixOS.

[ghthor]

The nix wiki is not the arch wiki sure, but y’all talking about documentation issues with nix.. what are you talking about. The getting started guides plus the nix wiki made getting running system easy.