this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
40 points (95.5% liked)
Linux
47398 readers
1218 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Hmm, I've never heard of NixOS. Is it suppose to be like blendOS or CurtainOS? A blend of different desktop environments?
It's unlike most other Linux systems I've ever used. The central idea is declarative structures. So your entire operating system, all of the apps and systems services and other custom things you need, are declarative in one place and hopefully easy to activate.
So instead of flatpak install, you add the program to a 'text file' and rebuild your system.
Everything is using the nix package manager which has been around since long before the distro nixos.
That's only the start of the rabbit hole, but if anything sounds interesting i encourage you to check it out!
Hmm, a very interesting approach indeed.
When you say rebuild, does it have to rebuilt everything? If so, is it quick to do so?
It checks everything that has changed since last build and it changes only what is needed, I'd say 30 seconds or less normally. When updateing, you can end up updating all of the packages on your system at once, which of course is dependent on your network speed / sometimes compile time, but for me it can take around 10-15 minutes in that case. On a slow network, with a laptop CPU.
But you get atomic rollbacks so any breaking changes can be rolled back just by rebooting and selecting a different build.