NixOS

Reader supplied reviews for NixOS Average rating 9.1 from 88 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: -- unstable24.1124.0523.1123.0522.1122.0521.1121.0520.0920.0319.0919.0318.0917.0916.0916.0315.09.101214.12.88514.04.63013.10.35728 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: 2025-05-14 Votes: 1 It's rocking stable distro I've been used for 2 years. It's build from scratch with unique approaches to solve issue that still happen on traditional distro, 'dependency hell'. NixOS which based on Nix uses isolation storage for each packages in /nix/store which is recognized by unique hash. Using this feature, I can install a package with different version in a machine. Being declarative is having a good documented state of OS that can be traced to improve our system. It also easier to implement another desktop environment as a module with changing 2 line parameter on a configuration file. Pros: - It has two release mode: stable release and unstable (rolling) release. - It has its own version controlling option using Flakes. - Nixpkgs repository is the largest repository by number of maintained packages. - Actively developed and used on enterprise and academical sector. Cons: - Documentation is good, but not centralized like Arch and Gentoo. - It will be nice if there are non-systemd variant of NixOS officially. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 24.11 Rating: 1 Date: 2025-05-13 Votes: 2 NixOS sounded like a dream: a Linux distro with declarative configs, reproducible builds, and easy rollbacks. I was hyped to try it, but honestly, it’s been a frustrating mess. The learning curve is brutal—way steeper than I expected. The documentation is dense and often assumes you’re already a Nix wizard. I spent hours trying to set up basic stuff like a web server, only to hit cryptic errors that Google barely helped with. The Nix language itself feels like a clunky puzzle; writing configs is like solving a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded. Package management is another headache. Sure, Nix’s approach is unique, but the package repo (Nixpkgs) isn’t as vast as Debian’s or Arch’s, so I kept running into missing software. When I tried building my own packages, the process was a nightmare—slow, finicky, and poorly explained. Even basic updates took forever, and my system would occasionally bork itself because of some obscure dependency issue. The community isn’t much help either. I hopped on forums and Discord, but responses were either slow or laced with “read the manual” vibes. For a distro that prides itself on being cutting-edge, it feels half-baked for anyone who isn’t a sysadmin or functional programming nerd. I wanted to love NixOS, but it’s too much hassle for too little payoff. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 24.11 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-05-09 Votes: 3 Best distro for the most reliable and consistent system between devices. I love that everything is made to be deterministic and dependable, and that nothing will break if you try a package out in the nix-shell. Even though the nix package manager is available for other distros, the integration with Nix OS is just on a higher level. The most useful feature for a secure and dependable system is the ability to boot into a previous build of the OS from the grub boot menu, so if you do break something because you installed the wrong drivers or removed a vital part of the system, you can easily go back to your previously working configuration to work out what's wrong. The sheer amount of packages available is insane, especially since they can each be tested and individually controlled in Nix OS. Having a fully rebuildable system from just your configuration.nix and its linked files is truly amazing, and should be a feature every OS should have, especially those targeting servers or other hardware that needs the same software on all of its iterations. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 88 reader reviews of NixOS...