NixOS has two main selling points:
- I can declaratively manage my system. That’d probably the Thing you know about it.
- but it also uses the Nix Package manager which allows you to install multiple versions of the same program. On Ubuntu, if I update bash from v4.6 to 5.0, it will replace /bin/bash and if any breaking changes were made, any program that has bash 4.6 as dependency won’t work anymore. On NixOS binaries are stored in /nix/store with a hash. So bash 4.6 is in /nix/store/hwnfuvshajdbgjajebskhak-bash-4.6 and 5.0 gets installed into /nix/store/638jsvusbhsuksvj76hwlsbj-bash-5.0 This allows us to have programs that depend on a old version of a software installed simultaneously with programs that depend on a new version of it.
No it isnt. It’s become exactly as toxic as Reddit! If that isn’t a succes, I don’t know what is!