A review of Nix/NixOS after using it on all my machines for three years. I'll cover what works, what doesn't, and why it's the first OS that's stuck with me.
Agreed with the article. There’s lots to dislike about Nix, but even with those downsides, NixOS is still better than any OS I’ve tried. Install an update and it’s borked? No worries. New PC and you want everything set up just like your old one? Copy one file over and it’s set up for you.
So, I’ve only played around with NixOS on a Raspberry Pi, but… Don’t people usually split their config up in multiple files, and then store than in a Git repository?
The process then still is: check out that Git repository, except there’s another step: copy over your private key so that you can decrypt your secrets.
Is that correct? Or did I make things needlessly complex for myself?
I don’t have any secrets in my config or a private key or anything and I’m currently running 4 servers from the same config (it used to be 8 or even more machines at some point even, including desktops).
But yes, it’s a multi-file config, it would be absolutely crazy to not split it up with how large it is.
Agreed with the article. There’s lots to dislike about Nix, but even with those downsides, NixOS is still better than any OS I’ve tried. Install an update and it’s borked? No worries. New PC and you want everything set up just like your old one? Copy one file over and it’s set up for you.
So, I’ve only played around with NixOS on a Raspberry Pi, but… Don’t people usually split their config up in multiple files, and then store than in a Git repository?
The process then still is: check out that Git repository, except there’s another step: copy over your private key so that you can decrypt your secrets.
Is that correct? Or did I make things needlessly complex for myself?
I don’t have any secrets in my config or a private key or anything and I’m currently running 4 servers from the same config (it used to be 8 or even more machines at some point even, including desktops).
But yes, it’s a multi-file config, it would be absolutely crazy to not split it up with how large it is.