this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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I was just thinking about switching to Nix, but I have no idea what to choose now.
I disagree with @Shareni@programming.dev (sorry!) - the biggest issue right now is that package maintainers are leaving in droves - at least 15 contributors left a few days ago, a number which has likely increased these past few days - and will continue to increase. I think the only people left will be the ones who support Eelco and the toxic culture brewed by him.
What this means is that you risk your packages getting out of date, including slow delivery of security updates (which was already an increasing concern, due to the way the Nixpkgs build system worked). Worst case scenario, some (many?) packages may never even get an update.
So now's definitely NOT a good time to switch, and in fact I'd also urge existing users to look at other distros, at least temporarily until this whole thing settles down.
Don't say sorry for making an actual argument, or are you some Canadian lol?
According to this list there are 3470 maintainers. Were those 15 doing so much work to warrant calling it the end of days?
A possible delay for some package updates vs certainly outdated packages in my native Debian. Not really a choice IMO
I guess it depends on what you're planning doing with NixOS or Aux. I wouldn't use it for anything new and critical. I'd figure out a mitigation strategy if I were relying on it for something critical.
But for experimental purposes, neither option seems like a bad call.
I've been tempted for a while to switch from good old reliable Arch (btw) to NixOS, but now I'm glad I procrastinated and just ran it in a little VM specimen jar instead.
Just use Nix and see where the drama goes in a year. I'm guessing your configs will be fully compatible or only require minimal changes, if the forks survive that long in the first place.
I'd suggest learning nix, flakes, and home-manager before going anywhere close to NixOS. This should help you out
You should learn the nix lang, flakes, zero to nix, etc and try not to get bogged down in the Nix/Aux stuff. Be prepared to wait for things to settle down on that side.