Re:Show HN: MyNixOS – Create and share Nix and NixOS configu...
by rgoulter on Sunday November 27, 2022 @08:53PM
(#33768993)
Docker solves "distributing software is hard" by using container images; so you copy the container image, and running that will work consistently everywhere.
Nix solves "distributing software is hard" by ensuring declarations of packages can be built/run in a reproducible way.
Software built with Nix doesn't need to run in a container runtime (which is much nicer for desktop / workstations).
Nix's strength is dealing with packages in a programmatic way. This allows it to also serve as a package manager (like brew or pacman), as a way of declaring an OS configuration (in NixOS), it can also be used to build container images, or VM images.
Nix solves "distributing software is hard" by ensuring declarations of packages can be built/run in a reproducible way.
Software built with Nix doesn't need to run in a container runtime (which is much nicer for desktop / workstations).
Nix's strength is dealing with packages in a programmatic way. This allows it to also serve as a package manager (like brew or pacman), as a way of declaring an OS configuration (in NixOS), it can also be used to build container images, or VM images.