NixOS is really a profound experience, once you embrace it. I used Arch for ~3 years and ended up reinstalling it maybe 15 times on my desktop alone. Switched to NixOS and I've used the same installation for 3 years, synced with my laptop and server, switching from x11 to Wayland to KDE to GNOME then back again with no problem.

It doesn't feel real sometimes. My dotfiles are modularized, backed up in Github and versioned with UEFI rollback when I update. I might be using this for the rest of my life, now.

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sroerick 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've heard of people doing this and I'm really interested in this. Can you recommend a write up on this or further reading?

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bigyabai 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I personally remember being inspired by Erase your Darlings and Paranoid NixOS Setup back in the day, less for the hardening measures and more because of how great the Nix syntax looked. Huge, monumental ass-pain setups could be scripted away in one or two lines like it was nothing. You could create wildly optimized configurations for your specific use-case, and then divide them into modules so they're portable.

It's not advisable to switch to one of these paranoid configurations outright, but they're a great introduction to the flexibility provided by the NixOS configuration system. I'd also recommend Xe's documentation of Nix Flakes, which can be used on any UNIX-like system including macOS: https://xeiaso.net/blog/nix-flakes-1-2022-02-21/

https://grahamc.com/blog/erase-your-darlings/

https://xeiaso.net/blog/paranoid-nixos-2021-07-18/

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xena 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For what it's worth: I no longer suggest the use of NixOS for any purpose. I only have one NixOS system in my house because it's my NAS and I am a coward.

	▲	sroerick 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What do you use and/or suggest?

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sroerick 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you have a solution for keeping files? Or are you all in the cloud?

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Macha an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

As a counter point I had the same arch install from 2014 until 2024, when I switched to NixOS