I'm in a similar position to the author—running NixOS on a Framework 13 for about a year—and while I agree with some of their points I think I disagree with others.
> However, this means that your projects end up populated with Nix files, which is particularly annoying when you want to submit PRs to upstream projects
This is a legitimate gripe, but it does have a mitigation, which is to add those files to your global gitignore. The trade-off you make here is that you have to explicitly add the files to repos that actually do need them, but that's a one and done cost.
> I'm now responsible for configuring this entire system. I am also responsible for updating this system.
On the contrary, I have felt much less responsible for configuring and updating my whole system since switching to NixOS. Most of my system is just whatever the upstream channels are doing. My whole system config is maybe 300 lines long, and most of that is a list of the programs I want installed, which is something that I've always wished I could have on other distros but can't.
On other distros I have felt much more responsible for controlling my whole system because random crap would break all the time and I had to learn how it was configured. That has never happened to me on NixOS.
Also, containers are totally available on NixOS and I use them all the time. I've avoided flatpak so far not because it's not available but because I want to try to do things the NixOS way and I haven't felt the need to move away from fully declarative.
None of which is to say that NixOS is right for you or anyone in particular, but so far my experience has been that there is a very steep initial learning curve that you do get over. Maybe someday I'll give Fedora Bluefin a shot, but in the meantime I'm definitely not regretting leaving behind the traditional distro model.
Not arguing for Nix here, but couldn’t you use Distrobox on Nix to mitigate some of the author’s problems while still getting benefits from Nix for the basic install?
Note: I’m not a Nix user - primarily Fedora and Debian, though I’ve used Bluefin a lot and used to use PopOS as a gaming desktop. (Rarely have any time for gaming these days…)
As a regular user of NixOS and distrobox: Yes, you absolutely can combine them. I actually ended up using distrobox a lot less than planned (native NixOS ended up being friendlier than expected), but it does work.
Seconded. I have been using nixos for a few years. I don't use it for everything, but I like it for dev. It was weird at first, and there were one or two early blocking problems I had to solve before I could do work. Like how do I set gpg pin-entry, but I forget stuff like that and have to search for it on any platform. At least on nixos is all written down somewhere even if I'm too lazy to take notes.
The installer is super easy to use; full disk encryption is baked in if you want it, the default desktop is fine, and the overwhelming majority of my config is just the apps I want installed by default.
I love this because it makes my desktop or laptop totally commodified: if I break my laptop I can get another one out of the closet and:
-- install nixos in 10 minutes
-- copy a couple of stanzas out of my nix config file into the new system one
-- untar a backup /home/user
-- `nix rebuild switch`
-- drink a beer
No installing a bunch of dev environment stuff. No greping internet for 'gpg pin-entry' or 'how to install docker' because I had to write that into a config in the first place. Basically I like nixos because I'm a lazy fucker and it makes me front end load the work so I only have to do it once.
Also, these days if I have trouble writing a nix thing I can usually just vibecode my way out of the problem. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> However, this means that your projects end up populated with Nix files, which is particularly annoying when you want to submit PRs to upstream projects
This is a legitimate gripe, but it does have a mitigation, which is to add those files to your global gitignore. The trade-off you make here is that you have to explicitly add the files to repos that actually do need them, but that's a one and done cost.
> I'm now responsible for configuring this entire system. I am also responsible for updating this system.
On the contrary, I have felt much less responsible for configuring and updating my whole system since switching to NixOS. Most of my system is just whatever the upstream channels are doing. My whole system config is maybe 300 lines long, and most of that is a list of the programs I want installed, which is something that I've always wished I could have on other distros but can't.
On other distros I have felt much more responsible for controlling my whole system because random crap would break all the time and I had to learn how it was configured. That has never happened to me on NixOS.
Also, containers are totally available on NixOS and I use them all the time. I've avoided flatpak so far not because it's not available but because I want to try to do things the NixOS way and I haven't felt the need to move away from fully declarative.
None of which is to say that NixOS is right for you or anyone in particular, but so far my experience has been that there is a very steep initial learning curve that you do get over. Maybe someday I'll give Fedora Bluefin a shot, but in the meantime I'm definitely not regretting leaving behind the traditional distro model.