You’ve basically identified the advantages and disadvantages of Nix properly.
When you learn Nix and how it works, it is incredibly powerful. Being able to version your entire OS with one configuration is incredible. Old software that messes things up just doesn’t exist. It’s easy to explore new software, configurations, and upgrades and roll back to your old state seamlessly. No more “well I deleted an environment variable and now my performance is 50% worse and I don’t even remember what that environment variable was named or where it should live.” With Nix, you can switch from i3 to Hyprland, try it out for a day, and then switch back to your old configuration seamlessly and easily.
The disadvantages are that you need to know Nix (the programming language and configuration file syntax) to do it, and they are complicated. Worth it in my opinion but it’s not easy.
Every other distro is basically different from Nix because of this, as you will be configuring them manually to a greater or lesser extent. I find that manual configuration to be annoying and I always had to create tools to help version my configs properly before Nix. But it is certainly easier to do since you just have to understand the software you’re installing and how to configure it. In Nix, you have to understand both that, and Nix.
I think it’s totally worth it. But only you can make that call for you.
Derivations are kinda complicated but you can definitely get them if you try! There’s nothing super magical about them. As opposed to the rest of Nix which can feel extremely and unfortunately magical…
Basically the question comes down to: who do you trust and why?
If you didn’t code it yourself or validate every line of code, you’re trusting someone with your privacy. Most of us have no interest in and no capability to code our own operating systems, so at some point you must trust someone else. (And even if you code your own OS, do you manufacture your own hardware?)
Linux obviously is open-source so you can verify code yourself. But there are closed-source packages and even being open-source is no guarantee people will make good privacy decisions. Still, pretty good compared to alternatives.
Google is an ad company who wants your personal information to sell you stuff. I personally don’t trust that with my privacy.
Apple is … okay. They take privacy extremely seriously and have no interest in profiting from your personal data. But they are closed source so you are trusting their implementation.
Microsoft generally sucks and I think personally they would do practically anything for a buck. So, no trust from me.
I consequently run Linux and iOS. But you have to weigh the pros and cons yourself.
I do infrastructure stuff professionally and wanted to not manage that at home so just went for a Synology.
Just depends on how DIY you wanna go. I’ve had my Synology for years and it’s needed zero ongoing maintenance and has never had any problems so I’m pretty satisfied with it.
I’m definitely not opposed to this from an ideological perspective — you are actively producing content for a platform that’s making money off of it, so surely revenue sharing with you is just the right thing to do.
That said unless the system has extensive human involvement I have no idea how it could possibly work. It seems rife for abuse. And I would bet on it being the first thing cut during cost-cutting (if it was ever implemented at all of which I’m pretty skeptical).
Most derivations are pretty flexible; the ones that aren’t, however, will require you to write your own overlay to fix them. Or just fork them entirely. This is one of the advantages in Nix in that you can create reproducibility at any granularity. Writing and using your own derivation is complex though. Most packages provide more than enough knobs to change their configuration on their own in my experience though — my current Nix build uses no derivations I had to write myself.
Home Manager and Nix itself are versioned so I don’t understand your complaint about config changing. If you’re happy with how your system works just don’t update it to a newer version. If you do, as in any other software, you risk breakage. The advantage of Nix in this scenario obviously is that rolling back in the case of an upgrade going wrong is incredibly trivial.
I would love to hear what definition they’re using that isn’t racist.
Of course I’m falling into their trap; they don’t actually care about words or definitions. They’re just pandering to the feelings of the racists to secure their votes.
I've made it perfectly clear what else you should be saying: literally anything. An interview? An article? A study? Is a screenshot truly the limit of what you can offer us in terms of world news?
I also have a perfectly valid point, and I believe I've made it, but since it seems to escape you:
Your submission quality is bad. Do better in the future.
Either way, no one is a citizen of Facebook or Meta. Those platforms can police their content in whatever lawful ways they desire, and if they want to police misinformation that's no one's business but their own.
People can still consume any information they like. But expecting and requiring Facebook or Meta to be that place seems pretty silly to me.
What would have been better is ... anything honestly. Any kind of interpretation or findings. Or, if that's asking too much, even a vague thesis statement.
This is definitional low quality and the OP should be embarrassed by it.
None of what you said is supported by either the screenshot itself or anything else that's been cited by the OP (or anyone else in this thread). Even calling it "statistical data about the US debt" is overselling it since it's literally just a screenshot and a link to a paper that (presumably?) the screenshot came from.
Anything you mentioned would be interesting to talk about, perhaps with sources? Interviews? Anything? But no; instead we're being told that the screenshot is sufficient context to ground any assertion we care to make.
My point is the post is vacuous and any discussion around it unmoored from anything objective or of interest.
You’ve basically identified the advantages and disadvantages of Nix properly.
When you learn Nix and how it works, it is incredibly powerful. Being able to version your entire OS with one configuration is incredible. Old software that messes things up just doesn’t exist. It’s easy to explore new software, configurations, and upgrades and roll back to your old state seamlessly. No more “well I deleted an environment variable and now my performance is 50% worse and I don’t even remember what that environment variable was named or where it should live.” With Nix, you can switch from i3 to Hyprland, try it out for a day, and then switch back to your old configuration seamlessly and easily.
The disadvantages are that you need to know Nix (the programming language and configuration file syntax) to do it, and they are complicated. Worth it in my opinion but it’s not easy.
Every other distro is basically different from Nix because of this, as you will be configuring them manually to a greater or lesser extent. I find that manual configuration to be annoying and I always had to create tools to help version my configs properly before Nix. But it is certainly easier to do since you just have to understand the software you’re installing and how to configure it. In Nix, you have to understand both that, and Nix.
I think it’s totally worth it. But only you can make that call for you.