NixOS Is The Power User Distro (Now With An Easy Installer!) 

There was a checkbox saying "Require strong password" in the installer

I use NixOS btw! (and i was involved in the creation of the GUI Installer) Thanks for covering it!

I love that NixOS is getting a graphical installer to make it more approachable. The only thing I'd change to it is to show snippets of Nix code at each step that updates as you change the fields to show what the options will look like once its installed. Just installing the system without showing any of the configuration I don't feel helps people actually get into NixOS as well as they could. Users are going to need to touch the configuration file eventually, so use the installer to people them a taste of it in a safe environment where they can manipulate a more familiar interface to see how it effects the code under the hood. Giving the option to also modify the config file directly could also be a nice bonus, but would be harder to get right.

Declarative system configuration is the future.

I mean, just like DT once said, regardless of the distro, the window manager/desktop environment (DTOS, e.t.c) will always be the same. U can be a power user on any distro for that matter.

just letting you know, after doing a nixos-rebuild , you dont have to reboot for your stuff to get installed(it just helps make sure some services gets started correctly.)

I think, they should probably add a menu to select various apps to install in the calamares installer and also save the configuration option to install same stuff in either different computers or reinstalling purposes.

You don't need to reboot after nixos rebuild switch, it automatically switches you into the new config

Hey DT, just wanted to let you know that your videos were what pushed me over the edge to switch to Linux. It's been 3 weeks on Manjaro and I wouldn't switch back to Windows if you paid me. Thanks!

Thanks DT, you just turned me on to my next 'for fun' bare metal distro I haven't done in awhile. Looks like a cool installation ‼️👍

Thanks for this!!! This video finally got me off my butt and helped to motivate me to install NixOS on one of my older desktop machines. I've been using Nix in Ubuntu for a while now, and I've been looking for an opportunity to deepen my understanding of it all. The graphical installer really helps for someone who's just trying to do this for the first time. I got stuck with some errors that I couldn't understand, until I figured out that UEFI didn't work with NixOS on that machine. When I used "Classic BIOS" instead, installation worked like a charm!

great video, everyone has already said the password thing in the installer but I'm just here to say you don't have to reboot when you change your config! you switch to the new configuration immediately without rebooting. you could immediately go to the terminal and type emacs and run emacs. the issue (and one of my only two issues with nixos) is that the .desktop file entries don't immediately appear in graphical menus for desktop environments until you log out and back in. and even just recaching the .desktop files doesn't do it because they all exist at different paths in the nix store and those paths only get updated when you log back into your DE (my only other issue with nixos is that whenever your DE gets updated it gets restarted without warning). edit: desktop files seem to be getting recached nowadays?? i hadnt noticed when this changed but the first complaint is no longer a thing!! really glad to see nixos getting more user friendly. I've long said that nixos has the potential to be the most user friendly linux distro and the best distro for noobs and experienced people alike when nix-gui is finished -- it's an ongoing project to write a graphical tool to configure nix, which, i mean, think about it. it would make it so your entire system could be configured from a single consistent and simple graphical tool without editing any files. a new user could get (most of) the power of an experienced user without having to touch an rc file ever, exclusively using drop-downs and checkboxes and text boxes. meanwhile the system just doesn't break. nixos has a LOT of potential to become very broadly popular and im excited.

NixOS is really a different beast. It is THE distribution for power users. I am quite happy with it. But I have to agree there is a steep learning curve but once you are past it, it is better than any other, in my experience.

My favorite distro! Thank you for reviewing

Great video, DT! I never heard about Nix before and this made me consider trying it out!

NixOS is single-handedly the smartest approach to any OS I've ever experienced. It gives you a rolling-based possibility while removing the "broke computer before meeting due to update" kind of stuff. This thing is nuts.

Thanks for sharing this. This is one of the few I haven't tested yet. So far it's really interesting. Installing a version right now :)

thank you for spreading the word on NixOS, DT! u should have given a try to Kate, since it was pre-installed. I'd been curious to see its sudo integration and in general how much has it improved, when I last saw it 2 decades ago :) I was even surprised by nano having syntax highlighting :) also, if you show nix-env -i, that's a good gateway for ppl who are used to the mutation-based approach

Favourite linux content based youtuber👍

Nixos is a good learning OS, cause it allows the user to play with the config. This is really cool almost like an app where you play with the preference. Kudos to the team for getting calamaris

12:55. Most changes don't actually require a reboot. Applications and services should be ready when the rebuild is done

You convinced me that anything Arch is the only way to live. This video feels like treason.

I love Nix. So happy to see it getting love lately

A "dictionary check" scans a list of most used passwords, a password dictionary, that hackers use to brute force a password. Its called a "dictionary attack".

I've been wondering when you would dive into NixOS. Now I don't have to wonder any more!

Tell me a grandma could even install windows. Grandma would probably forget her strong and complicated password.

Am I going to compliment this fan boy's video? Yes I am. Great job. Fascinating diestro and we'll presented on your part, DT

Oh my god, this makes it SO much easier to re-install compared to Arch! With Arch I constantly needed to write-down all the apps I want to keep in a text file on my phone, and retype paragraphs worth of apps every time I'd re-install Arch on a different machine. This is convincing me to try NixOS whenever I get the chance.

Nick did a really good job with this OS

One strong argument you could make for NixOS is, if you had trouble installing it without the installer, you probably should skip it. It's quite different from other distro's and to get the most out of it you will need to learn the Nix language, how to use nix-shell, etc. Just a basic install is nice to get started but you can get stuck easily after that if you didn't read any of the documentation.

Nice video, unfortunately I don't have time to try these distros myself so your videos are a live saver

10:58 i do not think spacing matters for syntax. but its much easier to read with consistent spaces 12:56 You do not have to reboot for most things installing software will work in the same boot But sometimes the application menus will not update with the new applications so i kill lxqt-panel and restart the panel there are also other switches on nixos-rebuild nixos if you want to really use it, you really need to read the manual for because you will just get upset when your normal programs built for a FHS linux will fail to run Just be understanding that nixos does not use FHS (there are tools to emulate it)

That one moment when DT really put in a "Strong and Complicated Password" :rofl:

I have recently tried linux again (from windows), because of some friends on my coding discord server mentioning nixos. And i have to say, at least if u understand a bit of programming, writing the configuration and all that kind of makes a difference for me. I have had problems with killing my Bootloader, even now i still sometimes kill my bootloader, yet with nixos it's like no issue what-so-ever, since my configuration is already in one single space. Literally the only reason i tried linux again, and i think i couldn't be happier with any other distribution.

I have a lot of failed installs on NixOS, where some random stuff I don't understand is missing.

Great Video DT. Loved it.

the calamaris installer is awesome, i really like it.

2 minutes into the video, and NixOS sounds very nice. This is my first time hearing of it.

On paper it sounds like the best thing since sliced bread, but in practice it is really complicated and doesn't give me even the slightest clue to what is going on - or rather why it is failing to do stuff. Particularly after install it just drops me into a text login, and after login, it's a blinking cursor and that's it.

man, been using arch lately because of it's archinstall command, so practical. I wish there was something like that for gentoo. also need to edit my configuration.nix, some months ago i installed NixOS on my laptop, enjoyed it, very nice distro.

Thanks again for another informative vid.

6:37 LMAO, you know he is watching, he 'was' your biggest fan!

NixOS is the Docker for desktop linux

Must... not... distrohop...

That rollback feature at the grub menu looks really interesting and useful.

Love your DT content ... and you almost managed to talk me out of even trying NixOS given what seemed like your struggles with its nanny-state password enforcement (before reading posted comments here that suggest it's not really required after all with check box). But I have tried repeatedly to do a live install using a USB smart card (8 gig) created through Etcher (that has no problem performing in this capacity for EndeavourOS) yet fails to get past "Stage 1" installation with NixOS. Just gets stuck asking for me to do unclear steps in root manual mode without providing any useful info. So I'm giving up for now. Clearly I'm missing something. Not an expert in Linux, but certainly not a noob... I guess I'd be a lot more motivated if I actually had problems with Arch + i3 ( = awesome) but I have not suffered from any of these "breakages" that seem to plague others ... either lucky or perhaps it's all that clean living? ;-)

Hey, as a video idea - can you go through the process of using NixOS to build Haskell? From the little I've read it's the best solution for solving common cabal/stack dependency issues. I've encountered a handful of tutorials showing how to build with just the Nix package manager, although they were pretty flaky, with some authors citing issues even getting Nix running in the first place. But now this is looking pretty promising. Not just for Haskell but any language really. Definitely some good content potential here. Looking forward to more videos about this.

Seems better than DT's experience with GNU Guix 😂

I would like to see a follow-up with home-manager. Nice video.

a lot of people can't install windows themselves (I know, since I've had to install windows for a lot of people)

This distro is awesome. It just took me a few minutes to setup samba share from a fresh install.

I really like what NixOS is offering here with reproducibility and I strongly believe this crucial feature it has will be eventually adopted by the major Linux distros out there. I would also recommend NixOS folks to work on the GUI edit manager of the config file, which will help people to quickly and easily modify and edit their specific configuration with the option to go deeper into the command/syntax line. Thank u for making this vid!

Nano did some basic syntax highlight while vim did not. That's some extra points for nano.

tbh there are some reasons I dont really use nixos...for eg its not that easy to manually compile software for eg dwm you have to use stuff like overlays and all that to get dwm working then again if incase you mess up the dwm config and want to rebuild it again it becomes a PITA because patch command does not work really well with nix Same thing with say something like building a custom kernel Also the package downloads can become INSANELY large specially on unstable repos, for eg on NixOS package downloads went as much as 4gb after 3-4 days whenever the updates were pushed out Then again since it uses different ways to manage dependencies the base system can also take up a lot of space compared to some lightweight fully FHS distro (like Arch Linux) Meanwhile on Arch with the similar packages, updating weekly are atmax 1.5gb Also NixOS afaik has only 1 mirror...so which means if it goes down or the ISP decides to throttle it then rip downloads (but I still do use Nix Flakes+Home manager on my Arch system for managing my dotfiles)

One thing I love about Nix the language is that white space indentation doesn't actually matter.

Just imagine uploading these configuration file onto multiple systems and creating identical systems in minutes

How about during the setup using the graphical interface it has list of applications to add to the install or remove from the install like in old windows setup. Maybe even an option to install from media some programs for offline installs. Maybe a search function for compatible repositories. The scripting for the install looks simple enough to use and would help for mass installs or restore drives. I would of loved this for my Mint XFCE with Twister UI.

give a shot to chimera linux which is linux with freebsd userland... also musl!!!

I tend to buy second-hand computers so having a reproducible environment is really great, going to start playing around with nixOS soon. Thanks for the overview!

Nice video!

I honestly think that nixos is the endgame distro and that even at the peak of your Linux knowledge you should be on nixos nixos is easily the most innovative distro and really introduces a new paradigm to linux really the only reasons to not use nix are that you don't have the experience for it and that you REALLY hate systemd

I am hoping you decide to switch from Arch to NixOS (not sure how DTOS would work under NixOS). I have been living in Nix for a couple of days now and it's slick but a tad bit confusing when it comes to home-manager and flakes. But still a strong contender to replace Arch.

So hey DT, you mentioned NetworkManager is a good thing to use all the time (and I agree), and was playing around with DTOS on a vm. So two questions: 1) Got a recommended solution for DTOS? (or just whatever? Usually I go blueberry on this, but LinuxMint sounds like they're moving away from it) and 2) DTOS on NixOS when? (kidding.. kind of..)

It’s what it always needed. Impressive!

Hey DT, besides reproducible builds and backup configurations, (both of which can be achieved using a custom made Arch install script and timeshift on btrfs [though not the same]) what are some other benefits of NixOS over something like Arch?

anybody else notice a slight thump (not loud) like DT is tapping his filter screen?

a very interesting distro. I might have to give it a go. Thanks, DT!

A little fast for my old man brain - but I'm going to give Nix another shot - in a VM of course. - But I sure wish they had a Wimpy User widget like Garuda / Endeavor have - where a user can pre- choose all the packages at install. Nevertheless - its an impressive ISO.

my grandma wouldn't install nixos, she is using arch btw.

I haven't tried NixOS yet, but I can't help but wonder if it has anything resembling a "configuration.nix.d" or "configuration workspaces" of some kind. That is, small, temporary overrides and additions you could layer onto the base config depending on the specific task you wanna do at the moment. This would be good to keep extra software and development packages you don't use frequently out of the system when you don't need them, while still being able to reenable those changes easily and on the spot when you need them, or being able to multiboot several mostly-identical configurations that only differ slightly for things like VFIO. This could allow to keep systems incredibly lean and bloat-free for most of their runtime.

Seems very interesting! Are you able to copy the configurations.nix file into the usb drive that you boot from, so you can have the exact same software? Can you install packages in ways other than adding them to the config file?

Great for a strong server. Oddly enough what Longhorn was supposed to have been.

Did that say 2x 12-core threadripper at 8:20 ? Or am I seeing that wrong?

It would be nice to get as suckless as possible distro (like void) combined with a source based nature and high configurability (like gentoo) with a package manager similar to Nix and ability to run your own builds on a third party server using your very own config so you get an optimised build "for free".

Great idea. Why not use a heterogeneous configuration manager like Terraform to deploy your OS?

Imagine people uploading their config files and people could just copy paste that and install nixOS. I also think that's the future.

Glad you changed your mind about NixOS

The only problem I have is that my configs get stuck in feature creep! 😅

BTW, I use NixOS! I love nixos-hardware channel, makes it really easy to get sketchy hardware like GPD Pocket 3 to work without any issues.

Nix/nixpkgs/nixos as an idea is pretty good, the implementation and the project itself is at most an academic toy. The benefit is having an almost monolingual, somewhat testable codebase seems to be worth it. And it's easier to package and build stuff, compared to arch.

I thought a power user distro would make it as hard as possible to filter out noobs 🤣

im new in linux world so can you explain what difference between Manjaro and Nixos?

im confused - so can you install stuff outside of the config, but the config is just for installing an OS all in 1 go with your core apps? cool stuff!

It comes with 5.15 LTS currently... yes the one with serious issues with Alder Lake processors. It seems easy to update to 6.0 however. and 6.1 LTS is coming possibly before February 2023

nixos seems to me almost more like a more skid-esque version of gentoo

Thank you DT

BTW, I use NixOS!

4:28 ... there is a checkbox bellow it for requiring a strong password that is on by default

Thank you for another great video. I've been using nixos for few months when I saw nice introduction on this channel. It was great experience in the beginning, but I went back to Arch because of aur and some configurations that I just didn't know how to set without knowing nix. Nixos is very interesting distro but Arch is still my favorite.

Haha loved that nix made dt change his usual strong and complicated password 😂😂😂

DT who did you watch on youtube about linux, back when you first started. GVDT

I chose " install alongside " and it keeps failing . obviously user error but I don't know what I'm doing wrong., ??

fire, thank you

I'm using pure arch, but the thought of re-installing arch and opening up the wiki to get my configs back in order and updated is always such a daunting task. Just not enough time in the week. I don't want to go through the wiki anymore; just want to get stuff done. Using Calamares is nice, but the challenge is that what happens when Calamares doesn't have software that you need? Or say I want to switch to a DE vs WM, and then I need different packages, and have to remember where I put my list of software for that setup. I believe NixOS is the middle ground to really blend the best of both worlds. One config file to get a reproducible system, or maybe two or three config files total to get the different flavors of Linux that I want to work. It does sound amazing. I'm going to give this a spin in a VM as well! I believe arch should evolve to adopt this style of installation. Feed it one single, easy-to-use & read config file, and build the system entirely off of that.

Hey DT. I really want to give Nixos a try on my production machine to test hardware, printer, scanner,etc so I hope you show us how we can dual boot Nixos with archlinux.

this is great news!!

Hi can't you do your uploads on rumble as well. Is it a lot of extra work?

Call me blind, but how does one update this system?

just start using "qwerty" as password for needed longer passwords

What if nixos is next nixos store configuration