alt Hacker NewsThere is something to be said about NixOS, it really is a matter of setting `services.immich.enable = true;` in a configuration file. I find this really powerful and simpler than docker and docker-compose. But don't get me wrong, I am all for containerization when it comes to other OS/distros. Yes, there is a learning curve for the Nix language and creating your own packages. But anyone who can install a distro can install NixOS. Instead of running your apt/dnf/pacman commands, you edit a file with your package names and services you want to enable, and run `nixos-rebuild switch`. Though, you might find standalone binaries such as uv and its portable Python bundles don't work out the box, there is a a few lines configuration to get it working. Having a single language for configuring all services/applications (neovim,nginx,syncthing,systemd, etc) is refreshing. And of course combined with generative AI, you can set up a lot quickly.
Immich is one of the only apps on iOS that properly does background sync. There is also PhotoSync which is notable for working properly with background sync. I'll take a wild guess that Ente may have got this working right too (at least I'd hope). This works around the limitation that iOS apps can't really run as background apps (appears to me that the app can wake up on some interval, run/sync for a little and try again on the next interval). This is much more usable then for example, the Synology apps for photo sync, which is, the last time I tried, for some reason insanely slow and the phone needs to have the app open and screen on for it fully sync.
Some issues I ran into is the Immich iOS app updating and then being incompatible with the older version of the server installed on my machine. You'd have to disable app updates for all apps, as iOS doesn't support disabling updates for individual apps.
In my specific scenario, the latest version of Immich for NixOS didn't perform a certain migration for my older version of Immich. I had to track down the specific commit that contained the version of Immich which had the migration, apply that, then I was able to get back to the latest version. Luckily, even though I probably applied a few versions before getting the right one, it didn't corrupt the Immich install.
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I'm running NixOS on some of my hosts, but I still don't fully commit to configuring everything with nix, just the base system, and I prefer docker-compose for the actual services. I do it similarly with Debian hosts using cloud-init (nix is a lot better, though).
The reason is that I want to keep the services in a portable/distro-agnostic format and decoupled from the base system, so I'm not tied too much to a single distro and can manage them separately.
> But anyone who can install a distro can install NixOS. Instead of running your apt/dnf/pacman commands, you edit a file with your package names and services you want to enable, and run `nixos-rebuild switch`.
You can do the same with any configuration manager such as puppet, salt or chief.
This is my favorite use of CLI AI coding tools: updating my nix config. I can just ask my computer to configure services for me!
Regarding NixOS, I'm mostly afraid of them going on a user purge after their developer purge. You just never know who this group of people will come after next, especially after they started defining "Fascism" as "anyone asking for how they define Fascism".
And the jump of getting rid of people you hate who contribute to your project and you can do little harm to, to getting rid of people you hate who are of no use to you and you can do genuine damage to (e.g. by installing a tor exit node) is a step down if you think you could get away with it.
But what's the performance of NixOS compared to other distros? Also, I imagine CUDA installation is not as simple as changing a few lines of config file?
Immich was my gateway into NixOS. It did a really good job of showing how well it can work. I'm only a couple of months in, so we'll see if it sticks, but I'm also running it on my laptop now.
Nix can be easy,but it's not simple.
Obligatory link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SxdOUGdseq4
> There is something to be said about NixOS, it really is a matter of setting `services.immich.enable = true;` in a configuration file.
Assuming someone has added it to NixOS, yeah. There are plenty of platforms even easier than that where you can click "install" on "apps" that have already been configured.
My problem with NixOS is the second you try to go "outside the guardrails", the difficulty increases 100x