NixOS’ influence and importance at pushing Linux forward into the (previously) unexplored landscape of configuring your complete system through a single config file is undeniable. It’s been a wild ride, but it was well worth it.
And although it has only been relatively recently that it has lost its niche status, the recent influx of so-called ‘immutable’ distros springing up like mushrooms is undeniably linked to and inspired by NixOS.
However, unfortunately, while this should have been very exciting times for what’s yet to come, the recent drama surrounding the project has definitely tarnished how the project is perceived.
NixOS’ ideas will definitely live on regardless. But how do you envision NixOS’ own future? Any ETA’s for when this drama will end? Which lessons have we learned (so far) from this drama? Are there any winners as a result of this drama? Could something like this happen to any distro?
In case you’re out of the loop. Though, there’s a lot that has transpired since but which hasn’t been rigorously documented at a single place; like how 4 out of 5 NixOS board members have quit over the last 2 months or so.
Not to add fuel to the flame by asking, but how’s it been on Guix? I’ve heard Guix does a lot of things better, but also that there’s far less packages and it’s harder on modern hardware.
I’m not the op, but I’ve been using guix for several months on a new fairly top of the line desktop PC and it’s going great. I’ve been able to play steam games and set up my dev environment with basically no issues.
The catch is you need to use non-official repositories (i.e. https://github.com/nonguix/nonguix) to use the non-libre kernel and other software not on the official channel.
There’s also this nice little search engine - https://toys.whereis.みんな/ - where you can look for packages from other repos (or channels as they are called in guix).
I use Nix on my macos work laptop to set up my dev environment, but I definitely prefer guix so far, mostly due to the it being configured in guile over the weird nix language. The biggest advantage I see of Nix is that it has a bit more features and lots more packages.
I am a pretty hardcore emacs user and lisp lover though, so ymmv.
https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix
They literally have this as the link in all their docs so I am not sure why you would choose the mirror on the fully-proprietary, Microsoft-owned code forge.
I chose the mirror cause I was just writing that comment super quickly on my phone. But uh, thanks for the right link I guess?
I haven’t tried running a full Guix system yet but im really liking it as a package manager on top of arch. Yes, hardware support can be iffy, but there is an unofficial channel called nonguix that packages the standard Linux kernel instead of linux-libre, and yes there are less packages but honestly packages are so much more fun to write? I’ve written a few package definitions for both my own use and ive made a request to add one to the official channel. And I feel like, if I really needed something that would not be packaged due to complexity or something, I could try and use flatpak or an appimage or something. I think its definitely worth checking out.