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Why do you use the distro you use?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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I use NixOS, it appealed to me because i got to a point where i liked minimal distros like arch and void and i could build them up exactly the way i like them to be, however i didn't like how i would have to go through that whole process again if i wanted to do a reinstall. With NixOS i can still craft my OS the way i like it, with the benefit of it being saved as a config, and easy to restore. I did make my own post-install script for void but NixOS is a more solid solution compared to my own janky script. I'm hoping to finally settle down on this distro. I guess the upside to the huge learning curve with nix is that it's a good motivator to not abandon it because it would feel like my efforts to learn it would go to waste lol.
Everything-in-my-life-as-code FTW
Besides everything else you said, I especially love how you can store entire bash scripts in the nix configs, and even populate pieces of said scripts with variables if you so desire.
Also, if you run
nixops, it's much easier to work with if your dev system is also running NixOS.What do you use nixops for?
It's for deployments and managing many environments/machines from a single CLI interface. You can do all sorts of things like push configs based on labels/groups, gather real-time data/logs, scale up/down. It's great when you have a lot of VPS/VDS/VMs to manage and you're not using a platform's specific management tools.
I mainly use NixOS as a barebones backend, keep it as minimal and hardened as I can, then most of the projects/apps that run are done through something like Docker or k8s. So for me, it's all about managing the underlying servers that provide the tools needed for a project to operate.
The tool itself is undergoing a pretty big redesign at the moment, but you can get the gist of it from the overview in the manual of the commands.
https://hydra.nixos.org/build/115931128/download/1/manual/manual.html#chap-overview
That's fair enough, I also host some applications on a k8s cluster, but for the underlying OS I picked talos instead.
I use NixOS and Home Manager to keep my configuration as code and shared between my PC and laptop.
The only VM I have running NixOS isn't actually doing all that much, and I don't mind ssh-ing into it to apply new configs from time to time.