alt Hacker NewsWhat?! Insane take. NixOS is where the most "magic" happens, over and under the hood. It brings it's own language!
Simple package based distros like Arch basically just extract archives. Very few packages trigger post-install steps which usually just (re)generate something like initrd.
Afaik, bricking Ubuntu is either due to user error (e.g. mixing incompatible package sources) or the devs released broken/buggy packages...
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I think you uncovered the actual reason without saying it.
- in traditional package manages, the dependency is global, and potentially breaks everything else installed.
- in nixos, package is isolated to the environment and can co-exist on its own, for the purpose of one application.
> Simple package based distros like Arch basically just extract archives. Very few packages trigger post-install steps which usually just (re)generate something like initrd.
Sure it's simple, just like 80% solving the problem is usually significantly simpler than solving it 100%. Nix (and its generation) is the only package manager that actually works.
Try installing kde and gnome, then uninstalling both and check how many packages remain.
Nix can do that with the whole world with nothing residing.
I never used arch so I can't comment on that.
I'm comparing it to my experience with Ubuntu where packages can have complex install dependency flows that can destroy your system at any time. They also pollute your entire system. This is simple in the same way assembly is a simple way to program. You can do anything and destroy anything. It's essentially spaghetti code but in OS form.
You can say it's "user error" or "packaging error", which is arguably true, but this "user error" and "packaging error" literally does not exist in NixOS. Installing a package is unable to touch anything outside of it's own designed nix store folder. That is why it's so much simpler to understand for me. I can check the nix store path and see what a package has. I can fearlessly install a package without worrying my system will break. I don't have to worry about residual dependencies remaining on my system.
The nix language itself ain't it though, I agree.
If you're not making changes to the bootloader it's essentially impossible to brick nixos: updates are fully atomic and every change can be rolled back by booting into an old generation.
This combined with the fact that the full source code for the system is contained within a single monorepo that I can checkout and grep through makes NixOS the easiest to understand and most transparent distro I have ever used.