NixOS

Reader supplied reviews for NixOS Average rating 9.1 from 103 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: 25.11 Rating: 10 Date: 2026-01-15 Votes: 7 This is what Linux was meant to be. No more wasting time reinstalling everything or worrying about different versions of thhe same app running thanks to the configuration files. And it is immutable just like steam os and bazzite so I feel like I can get all the advantages those do while still being upstream like on arch and fedora. And even if something doesn't make sense it is easy to edit the configs by using something like AI for example and the rebuilds either succeed or fail and no changes are made if they do so it feels like a new spin on what can be done when managing the operating system. Was this review helpful? Yes No 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: 15 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 See all 103 reader reviews of NixOS...