> I have no idea why everyone isn't using NixOS.
Well, in my case it is because Nvidia Jetson's line of products is forcing me to run Ubuntu.
I tried. I didn't feel like spending days learning their custom config language just to install a program I want to use. Ease of use is not a label I would apply to NixOS.
Try NixOS with the new redesigned command line. It's much simpler. No idea why this is not getting advertised more widely, as it's been worked on for a few years already: https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/779
For example, opening a temporary shell with, say, GIMP, is as simple as: nix run nixpkgs.gimp
If you want to check what packages are available for GIMP, because you are not sure what to run: nix search gimp
I tend to forget very convoluted commands, and I find the new nix much simpler than pacman or apt.
Documentation has also matured a lot, see: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Resources
Where are the docs for the nix command?
thanks!
> I have no idea why everyone isn't using NixOS.
Because NixOS is a valid, but too rigid and cumbersome a solution to a real problem.
ostree+containers is the realistic solution to that problem, in my opinion. Worse, sometimes, is better.
If you start to run our of disk space, then a quick garbage collection will remove all unused packages and builds.
The other nice thing about the nix-shell is I can incorporate pip into it (and probably other package managers as well, though I rarely use anything other than Python). So I can open a shell, add various lib type dependencies and any Python packages I want. All of it is only available in the shell, and when I exit they're gone as far as my OS is concerned.
You could clone a repo that contained my default.nix file, jump into a shell and be working with and identical environment to mine.
I have no idea why everyone isn't using NixOS.