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The original was posted on /r/nixos by /u/Z-Crime on 2024-11-11 00:14:58+00:00.

So new is in quotes, b/c I wasn’t completely new(I’ve touched ubuntu which isn’t near this), but the level of depth I reached with NixOS is something I’ve never done before.

1. The Initial Choice

I never considered switching to linux as a daily driver, up until I saw some videos on Linux. Eventually going down the ladder I came across some new distros(for me). The only one which I had ever used in my virtual machies was ubuntu. But deep diving with Vimjoyer’s videos to some extent pushed me to NixOS.

So I ended up ditching my windows install, for nix. 2. The depths

Upon installing NixOS successfully I started using flakes, as most dotfiles I came across were all flake orientated. My initial configuration comprised of using KDE with flakes nothing particular. Eventually I came across the Home-manager video and basically said lets go further. This is when I stumbled across LibrePhoenix’s vids on setting up NixOS. Though it wasn’t very clear into how the hierarchy of config.nix/flakes/home-manager had to be separated.

Being the noob I am, I eventually found someone’s dotfiles with a clear separation of how a NixOS configuration should be. (Please Note at this time I had no idea of Misterio’s config).

Eventually for a while I was happy with my basic KDE config with Flakes + HM, but things would take a turn as I got into impermanence. Now the documentation for impermanence was something interesting to the say the least. While the official repo gives a dedicated understanding with disko I decided to took a different approach and attempted to manually partition my drive. When searching for impermanence I came across Will Bush’s video on YT. It was a great learning experience. Eventually I was able to set up impermanence to work, but I came across some minor issues that sort of prolonged my ability to be “productive” on my system. 3. The tragedy.

So upon my encounter with impermanence for a long time I was setback a decent while with what seemed like a minor issue. Despite eventually fixing it, I would run into a similar issue of a lack of dedicated document that would hint solutions for the later errors I would encounter. The “tragedy” overall was that despite being able to read nix after looking through so many dotfiles, I would found myself in the sea of people asking for help. This is not a bad thing, but my intention with something like NixOS was that I could pull it off myself without weeks of lacking a solution. However it wasn’t the case. I entirely accept that it was my bellow basic level of understanding before I started to use NixOS. Though frustration only grew when it came to looking through post after post of issues that would have very complex solutions.

Final thoughts

After getting pass some of the issues I had and sort of understanding NixOS, would I suggest it to a beginner like myself? Not really. While people such as Vimjoyer, or LibrePhoenix and many others do their best in giving quality content of how you can get into NixOS, it is essentially very surface level. Getting into NixOS does teach responsibility, but the lack of pinpointing “best practices” such as the organization of your system, or various modules requires and immense amount of time. Now if you do have the time NixOS is amazing to use.

Though it has been amazing, I think I will temporarily pause on NixOS for now.