There is a similar question on the site which must not be named.

My question still has a little different spin:

It seems to me that one of the biggest selling points of Nix is basically infrastructure as code. (Of course being immutable etc. is nice by itself.)

I wonder now, how big the delta is for people like me: All my desktops/servers are based on Debian stable with heavy customization, but 100% automated via Ansible. It seems to me, that a lot of the vocal Nix user (fans) switched from a pet desktop and discover IaC via Nix, and that they are in the end raving about IaC (which Nix might or might not be a good vehicle for).

When I gave Silverblue a try, I totally loved it, but then to configure it for my needs, I basically would have needed to configure the host system, some containers and overlays to replicate my Debian setup, so for me it seemed like too much effort to arrive nearly at where I started. (And of course I can use distrobox/podman and have containerized environments on Debian w/o trouble.)

Am I missing something?

  • @[email protected]
    4•9 months ago

    Very good explanation. It’s an often overlooked property of NixOS and why I often feel like Nix on other systems is an okay way to get packages but you’re missing out on all the good stuff you get through the modules, like losing 95% of what makes the concept good.

    I don’t think NixOS is the best possible solution to the problem, but it’s the only original distribution that even tries to tackle it instead of just working around it.

    • Atemu
      2•9 months ago

      it’s the only original distribution that even tries to tackle it instead of just working around it.

      Well, apart of GUIX of course ;)

      It’s sort of a conceptual fork of Nix but the actual implementation is all original.

      • @[email protected]
        2•9 months ago

        I thought so too but learned recently that Guix system is nix under the hood, basically translates everything, so it’s more than a conceptual fork though obviously some more work went into it than your average Ubuntu fork.

        It uses low-level mechanisms from the Nix package manager, but packages are defined as native Guile modules, using extensions to the Scheme language—which makes it nicely hackable.

        https://guix.gnu.org/en/about/

        • Atemu
          2•9 months ago

          They used to use the nix-daemon to realise derivations but that too was replaced original software at some point I believe. Everything else has been guix own tooling for a long time.

          They still use the same derivation file format (.drv) and the basic concepts are the same (“conceptual fork”), so you could theoretically be able to realise a derivation produced by guix using nix-daemon/nix-store but that’s about it as far as similarities go.

          If you don’t believe me, go take a look at the source code. I promise you won’t find a single line of C++ in it, only a ton of parenthesis ;))))