This post focused solely on the Nix package manager and Nix packages - for anyone that uses MacOS but is interesting in trying NixOS (or using it within a VM in MacOS), I definitely recommend Mitchell Hashimoto's NixOS repo: https://github.com/mitchellh/nixos-config

Honestly, doing that may be easier and a better option than using Nix packages in MacOS.

> Honestly, doing that may be easier and a better option than using Nix packages in MacOS.

Respectfully, I disagree. I’ve been using Nix on a couple of my Macs, including on an M1, and I’ve cutdown my dependence on homebrew almost to the point of its absence; I rely more on Nix packages, than on Homebrew packages.

Having said that, I still wouldn’t recommend anyone using Nix; steep learning curve, and too many rough edges.

> I still wouldn’t recommend anyone using Nix; steep learning curve, and too many rough edges.

I'd like to think there are roughly two camps of people:

Those who hear about Nix's declarative nature, with its reproducible/'pure' nature, and generational installation, all of which allow for some pretty neat UX. To this group, Nix sounds technically interesting.

The other group, those who want a tool that just works, that's simple to use, and already get their job done with other package managers. -- I think for this group, Nix is going to be a bad tool to recommend, even if they keep hearing about how neat Nix is.

Rather. Nix is wonderful 95% of the time. But the 5% of the time you run into some problem, it's much more difficult to get unstuck compared to other tools. (Other knowledge is necessary but not sufficient, the community is small so maybe harder to find a StackOverflow post, the documentation is fragmented, etc.).

I have exactly same problem using Nix package manager in Ubuntu. That's why for those other 5% you can usr usehomebrew or whatever other package manager you have in your system.

I am not sure what is the story of having NixOS as a server, but would not suggest to have it as a main OS. There a sometime cases when there are simply no package you want to install, or you install it but some functionality doesn't work. Yes, maybe one can fix/patch, but I simply fall back to apt-get in such cases, and don't spend my time on that. Usually I have problems like this with GUI application, ie: installed pdf editor, which can open pdf, but can highliting functionality doesn't work and the crashes.

This was what I thought when I was learning nix. Once I used NixOS, I realised it's not quite that difficult. -- The two big differences: 1. Roughly, you only really need to care about the NixOS config about as frequently as you'd change system files in /etc/ in other Linux distributions. 2. Some programs (e.g. minikube) will download a binary automatically, and this doesn't work well with NixOS.

I've seen tools like distrobox https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox recommended as backups on NixOS, as well as the usual Docker / VMs.

I secretly suspect some of the reason NixOS is popular is it's less trouble than nix on non-NixOS. Whereas, nix on macOS, I've sometimes mixed compilers/libraries, which leads to difficult to discern problems.