Post #1640515

2026-02-12 07:40 UTC

@purrperl @abmurrow @rperezrosario I've been using it since late 2019/early 2020, and - tbh - I didn't notice too many dramatic changes. The nix language is still a somewhat weird functional programming language. The learning curve is a bit rough if you're not used to functional programming languages. REPL in the "official" implementation needs some love; one of the forks - Lix - mostly fixes REPL in my experience, and can be used on regular NixOS installations. In my first few weeks/months of using NixOS i was treating configuration.nix as just a silly json, with a slightly different syntax. I think that's a good approach to limit the number of things to learn at the same time. Flatpak and docker work on nixos, for the things that aren't packaged. AppImage sometimes need some work. The number of packages in nixpkgs did grow.

Replies (2)

@krutonium@social.treehouse.systems 2026-02-12 07:44

@ar @purrperl @abmurrow @rperezrosario I concur about treating it as silly json - Until you start doing conditionals and such you really can just treat it like that, and it's very effective. Of course then you end up going down the flake based rabbit hole and end up like me with a configuration around 8000 lines long and covering give or take 5 different machines with varying degrees of difference - Laptop and Desktop are mostly the same, my router on the other hand... (To be clear it's that complex because I enjoyed digging into it, not because it had to be.)

Open ##1640516
@purrperl@noc.social 2026-02-12 07:46

@ar @abmurrow @rperezrosario Thanks for the thoughtful responses. I can probably get used to another quirky programming language, since I have worked with many other languages. Might even look into writing a Ruby gem, or a Perl module, to implement a replacement to the nix language. Both Perl and Ruby are very flexible and user-friendly languages, and choosing either of those could significantly drive nixOS adoption. #Perl #Ruby #nixOS #Linux

Open ##1640517