NixOS

Reader supplied reviews for NixOS Average rating 9.1 from 102 review(s) Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on NixOS? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- unstable25.1125.0524.1124.0523.1123.0522.1122.0521.1121.0520.0920.0319.0919.0318.0917.0916.0916.0315.09.101214.12.88514.04.63013.10.35728 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: unstable Rating: 10 Date: 2026-01-13 Votes: 1 Best Linux OS by far. Takes a bit to migrate if you're used to traditional declarative config, but once you do it's so nice and stable. Very easy to have multiple configs and switch between them as well. The package repository has everything you could ever think of, and after learning a bit of the configuration language, its not too hard to package your own stuff and even contribute to the repository yourself. Also great on servers, imperative gives you the benefits of docker without the overhead. Running many services is as easy as throwing `services.immich.enable = true` in your config Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 25.11 Rating: 10 Date: 2026-01-11 Votes: 14 Cons: - Time consuming. You have to accept that time must be spent to learn this OS. - Not FHS compliant by default. The /nix store gives a lot of troubles by default let alone it is read only and executables are only executed from there by design so no simple download and execute allowed by design. - Documentation is spread in many places and the most reliable and up to date doc is the source code of packages and modules. - There are two main ways of approaching nix. Old imperative/declarative installations and configurations using channels with old mature command tools. And new command syntax with declarative flakes. This mostly lead to confusion of new (and old) users to which to use and stick with. Despite that both doing same stuff and flakes are only pinning some versions. In my opinion unification is pretty string advantage and nixos should settle quickly for one way. Pros: - The system is programmable, literally. - Once nix is grasped, customization is limitless, you can do anything using nix, including adding FHS support for apps that needs it. - Development environment isolation is well supported by design. - Declarative and atomic with rollback support. Which makes it very stable. - Every user eventually turns into contributor directly or indirectly which lead to one the biggest repository of apps. - Nix the package manager can be used on other distros. - Very mature as it is not new os. Been twenty years there so actually search shows a lot of results for solved problems. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 25.11 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-12-26 Votes: 6 NixOS is an awesome distribution that uses the Nix package manager. NixOS is very different from what people usually think of a “normal” Linux distribution. The core difference is that the system is declarative, meaning you install and configure your OS decoratively and reproducible. Instead of modifying the system imperatively like on any other distribution, nearly all configuration can be expressed in Nix configuration files, which define the entire OS state. In daily use, NixOS runs fast and stable once configured, but it might take you a while to learn how to configure it. Package availability is excellent due to the size of nixpkgs, which is even larger than the AUR. All packages are installed in isolation, which means that multiple versions of software can coexist without any conflicts. And If you ever have problems with your current configuration, NixOS allows easy rollbacks because it saves previous system states after every rebuild. However, as mentioned, the learning curve is indeed steep. It took me months to fully learn how to configure my system in Nix and to use various tools like flakes or Home Manager. What makes it even worse is that the documentation for NixOS is terrible. It is scattered across the internet, and the official documentation feels almost randomly structured, making it difficult to find what you are looking for. The documentation often assumes decent Nix knowledge and does explain much, instead it just bluntly throws Nix expressions at new users, which they obviously won't understand. Overall, I am very satisfied with my experience using Nix and NixOS. Previously, when I used Arch, I kept a document with all configuration steps I did so I would not forget them when reinstalling the OS.With NixOS, that problem is vanished. The Nix configuration fully describes the system state, so all you need to do is rebuild it to get the exact same system as before. NixOS is best suited for power users and developers who value reproducibility, predictable system state, and configuration as code. It is not very beginner friendly, but for users willing to invest time, it offers one of the most powerful and maintainable experiences available out there. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 102 reader reviews of NixOS...