alt Hacker NewsReading the NixOS release notes every 6 months is how I learn about new software that I might want to try: https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/release-notes#sec-rele...
For my first few years of NixOS I didn't understand the point of the NixOS stable releases, since even on "nixos-unstable" I found that if my nix config evaluates, then it'll work. And in the very rare case things broke, I could easily rollback.
NixOS stable, for me, provides API stability. I can leave a machine auto-updating, and be confident that my nix config will continue to be compatible, and thus build.
Thanks to the release managers for the work that goes into this!
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Indeed.
As soon as lanzaboote works with stable, I'll go back to stable (but I think that is not the case yet, sadly).
Lowkey plug for lanzaboote though. Getting secure boot working went pretty well for me thanks to it.
There's still the data migration issue. If you follow unstable all the time, an app may update its data files or databases at startup. Then, you can still roll back the binaries, but they'll just refuse to work (best case) or corrupt the unknown data format (worst case).