So how about the NixOS and Guix distros?

K

KenJackson

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Guix is based on NixOS. Both are package management systems which, oh by the way, also purport to be Linux distros.

I find this very interesting, because I have always grouped Linux distros by which package management system they use. I like Fedora, Mageia, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS and the like because they use my favorite, RPMs. Ubuntu, Mint, and Debian are in the DEB camp. And a few, like Arch, have their own.

So here comes some projects that are package management first and then also distributions. I like the concept.

But they seem to have fooled DistroWatch, because neither one is listed.

Has anyone used either one?
 


Guix is based on NixOS. Both are package management systems which, oh by the way, also purport to be Linux distros.

I find this very interesting, because I have always grouped Linux distros by which package management system they use. I like Fedora, Mageia, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS and the like because they use my favorite, RPMs. Ubuntu, Mint, and Debian are in the DEB camp. And a few, like Arch, have their own.

So here comes some projects that are package management first and then also distributions. I like the concept.

But they seem to have fooled DistroWatch, because neither one is listed.

Has anyone used either one?
Distrowatch is very odd...you have to PAY to be listed. And that process takes YEARS.

But no, I have not tried either of them yet.
 
I've been running NixOS for a few years and I totally love it. I use it on netbooks, desktops, servers .. everywhere I can. It's strange that distrowatch have never added it. I don't know why, it's been on the waiting list since 2007! They also ask you not to pester them by asking to add a distro. Hopefully it will catch their attention soon :)

I've run Mandrake, Gentoo, Ubuntu and Debian, each for a number of years. The reason I'm sticking with NixOS is that it lets me have both a stable system and also up-to-date packages. Because of the isolation between packages, and the ability to instantly roll back to an earlier configuration, it lets you really hack around and try things out without fear of having to spend hours putting it back together again.

It has lots of other incredible features too, like the declarative configuration system. I keep the config for all the computers I manage in a git repo. I share the common config and tweak the stuff which is specific to each machine (some are desktops used for video and graphics editing, others are web servers). You can even take this further and manage a whole cluster of machines with NixOps, but I don't have that many machines :D

The downside is that it doesn't have such a large community, or nearly as many packages as a mainstream distro. It is easy to add new packages though. I've added a few myself.

You can also use the nix package manager on normal distros (it doesn't conflict with the native package manager), and even on OS X, although that's not so actively maintained.

It's worth checking out, even just for the fact that it takes such a different approach. There are also a lot of interesting academic papers on the motives and design choices made, well worth a read.
 

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