| Title: Boredom land with NixOS | |
| Author: Solène | |
| Date: 10 October 2022 | |
| Tags: nixos life | |
| Description: In this article, I share my feelings about using NixOS | |
| daily, welcome to boredom. | |
| # Introduction | |
| I like to tinker with systems, push their limits, see how to misuse | |
| them and have fun doing unusual setups. | |
| However, since I mostly switched all my computers to NixOS, there is a | |
| statement that repeats again and again in my head: NixOS is boring | |
| # Is it good to be boring? | |
| The open question may want a different answer depending on the context. | |
| For an operating system, I think most people want a boring one which | |
| work, and doesn't require having to fight it ever. | |
| In that ground, NixOS is extremely boring. It just works, when you | |
| don't want something anymore, remove it from its config, and it's gone. | |
| Auto upgrades are reliable, in case of a rare issue after an update, | |
| you can still easily rollback. | |
| In two years running the unstable version, I may have had one major | |
| issue. | |
| NixOS can be bent in many ways, but can still get its shape back once | |
| you are done. It's very annoying to me because it's so smooth I can't | |
| find anything to repair. | |
| This is disappointing to me, because I used to have fun with my | |
| computers by breaking them, and then learning how to repair it, which | |
| often involve a various area of knowledge, but this just never happen | |
| with NixOS. | |
| Most people will certainly enjoy something super reliable. | |
| # The Biggest issue encountered in NixOS | |
| Here is the story of the biggest problem I had when running NixOS. My | |
| disk was full, and I had to delete a few files to make some room, | |
| that's it. It wasn't very straightforward because it requires to know | |
| where to delete profiles to run the garbage collector manually, but | |
| nothing more serious ever happened. | |
| # Conclusion | |
| This blog post may look like an ode to NixOS, but I'm really | |
| disappointed. Actually, now I need to find something to do on my | |
| computer which is not in the list ["fix the operating system"]. | |
| I suppose someone enjoying mechanics may feel the same when using a | |
| top-notch electric bike with high grade components made to be reliable. |