NixOS Changed How I Think About Operating Systems
Started with Ubuntu, then got bored with the slow update cycle (don’t get me wrong — Ubuntu is still a great distro for its purpose).
Moved to Arch Linux and got excited by the bleeding-edge capabilities, but also spent a lot of time troubleshooting instability issues. I even had a dedicated USB just for Timeshift recovery.
Finally landed on NixOS.
After using it daily for more than a year, my biggest question is:
Why aren’t more people talking about it?
The declarative approach makes systems much easier to audit and maintain, even for a single machine. Rollbacks completely changed how comfortable I feel experimenting with my setup.
Another underrated advantage is that NixOS is extremely LLM-friendly, especially when using one long centralized config file. Explaining your setup, debugging issues, or generating configs becomes surprisingly efficient.
I’m a programmer with fair knowledge of the Nix language now, and I’m planning to start contributing to Nixpkgs next year.
Honestly, NixOS changed the way I think about operating systems entirely.