You can be sure software that is packaged with nix will behave the same on different computers.
You can avoid dependency conflicts.
You can automate some things that would otherwise take multiple (mostly manual steps) on other systems.

This video shows off some of the cool things you can do with nix: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Le0IbPRzOE&feature=share9

How do updates work?

You update a programming by specifying the latest version of a program in config and rebuilding.

You update the OS by pointing to the channel you want to use and rebuilding.

You can time travel back to a previous state if anything goes wrong.

Can it play Crysis?

I expect so, some people.do use nix for gaming.

[–] msage@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can be sure software {...} will behave the same

never had that issue before, as long as they have the same version and config

avoid dependency conflicts

I have those on Gentoo sometimes, possibly because I overloaded USE too much, but that's not something I have to deal with on Debian/Mint.

You can time travel back to a previous state

wasn't that possible before with snapshotting (btrfs/lvm)?

If it allowed me to avoid systemd, I would be willing to give it a go. Perhaps I will try it in a VM, but it's not going on any baremetal for now.

[–] uthredii@programming.dev -1 points 1 year ago

never had that issue before, as long as they have the same version and config

Then you are very lucky. "It worked on my machine" is a meme for a reason.

wasn’t that possible before with snapshotting (btrfs/lvm)?

I haven't used snapshotting with those before. I guess the difference is that with nix it is done by the package manager by default, with btrfs/lvm you would have to set that up independently (please correct of this is not the case).

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