Hi, everybody!
I've been toying with the idea of switching to NixOS for some time. I'm currently on arch (6 months), and while I like the idea of a minimal, only-what-I-want-installed, hackable system with the newest packages, I think having a system that always works, even if an update goes south, is more important to me.
Now, I'm still not sure if I should switch. There are some issues I'm worried about, maybe unnecessarily.
For one, what are the trade-offs of switching from Arch? Anything I have to watch out for? I've heard there are some issues with regard to the FSH and gaming, or just FSH in general, or just gaming in general. Secondly, the dotfiles. I hear there is the Home Manager for that, but it doesn't have support for everything, so some files would need to be managed in other ways. Is there a way to manage everything at the same time? Even better if everything is in configuration.nix. I thought of using env.etc.xxx.source and .text to link the dotlifes to the etc folder and change the contents, but it feels… cheap and unsafe to do that. Third, are flakes really that important? I hear about them everywhere, I haven't researched them yet, but I'm curious what the fuss is about.
Let me know if there is anything else I should consider. I mainly game, watch videos and sometimes play with the system if needed. I'm not sure if I really want to switch, or is it just "oooo, new shiny and cool" thing lol
Thanks :)
Flakes are only important if you want to develop for a nix system. If you are only using it or if you (like me) only writes server code which gets deployed via docker (or your language packaging solution) there is no need to think about flakes.
A counterpoint to this is that Nix without flakes is unusable to some, even if its just because of the better CLI interface.
A counterpoint to that is that nix with flakes in unusable to some. It's experimental and stuck in some limbo state unclear what's going to happen with users demanding features for it to be declared stable and maintainers unwilling/unable to change anything for fear of breaking it.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0I use a single flake with outputs for all my nixos and home manager only (Ubuntu) systems. I just started messing with nix in December. I have no idea what the old way is, but I've been happy with flakes.
That's not what flakes are important for at all.
Though unless you already know what flakes could do for you, I agree, you don't need to even think about flakes. They only concern one specific aspect of Nix and aren't even the only solution to that problem.