35 lines
1.6 KiB
Markdown
35 lines
1.6 KiB
Markdown
# NixOS
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I know some people, myself included, love to tinker with files that
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dictate how their system is configured. What if I told you it is
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possible to configure your ***whole system***, services, users, and
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packages included among other things, through a single file? (Or
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several through file inclusion)
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Well, NixOS does exactly that! And not only that, when you upgrade
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your system, a snapshot of your current system is taken so you can go
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back to it if your upgrade goes wrong for some reason. Awesome, isn’t
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it?
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Now, why don’t I use this distro? Well, again, I miss the AUR and I
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don’t find its syntax (which is a DSL made for this use-case
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precisely) particularly appealing, but I know a lot of people don’t
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mind this and actually like it. Also, I appreciate the separation
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between the system-level configuration and the user-level
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configuration, in case a user wants an additional package not included
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by the system for instance, or to set their `$PATH` to the desired
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value without tampering with the system’s `$PATH`. You can even create
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custom environment you can enter and exit if you need for instance a
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precise version of Python for a certain project which is not the
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default one installed on your system.
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Once again, this isn’t a distribution that targets Linux newcomers
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since you need to get your hands dirty to maintain your system.
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Be aware there is a difference between Nix, the package manager, and
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NixOS. Nix can be installed on a lot of systems, pretty much every
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Linux ones but also on macOS(!), while NixOS is the Linux distribution
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based on Nix itself.
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* [Homepage](https://nixos.org/)
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* [Download](https://nixos.org/download)
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