News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on NixOS is a good server OS, except when it isn't. Parent comment

Re:NixOS is a good server OS, except when it isn't by steeleduncan on Wednesday October 02, 2024 @06:12AM (#41718955)
Maybe I'm missing something, but the only branch in github:nixos/nixpkgs I can see receiving fixes is the 24.05 branch getting fixes backported from unstable. The last commit I can see to the 23.11 branch is about 3 months ago

This would imply only 9 months of security patches before I would need to upgrade the server. That is of course a far less risky process with NixOS, so perhaps that is ok, but it is a lot more work than the 5 years you get (free) with Ubuntu/Debian

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/branches/active

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:NixOS is a good server OS, except when it isn't by viraptor on Wednesday October 02, 2024 @07:39AM (#41719465)
You're correct, it's 9 months max, there's no lts equivalent. The updates are much less risky, but in business context you'd really need to discuss the decision. (I'd still prefer that way)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:NixOS is a good server OS, except when it isn't by SuperSandro2000 on Wednesday October 02, 2024 @06:45AM (#41719147)
Updating on NixOS is so much less painful that doing an update every 6 months is actually viable. Also the update already contains large parts of your config and can be easily tested in a VM.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:NixOS is a good server OS, except when it isn't by amusable3539 on Wednesday October 02, 2024 @11:04AM (#41721373)
It's more like 7 months of patches. Release (n-1) gets EOL'd 1 month after release (n), and releases are 6 months apart (in May and November). So 23.11 would've been EOL in July 2024.

And since a release happens every 6 months, while you do have an extra month's window, you still have to upgrade... every 6 months.

[ Parent | on HN ]