nixos-and-flakes-book VS nixos-wsl-starter

I'll be honest, the first few times I tried using Nix I just couldn't get into. It was too complex for the benefits I was getting. But that was using Nix on another OS.

I recently switched to NixOS because I wanted what they were selling and the experience this time around was way better. Having no other option but to figure it out made me learn the essentials real quick (like an exchange program to a foreign country that speaks another language).

If you think about it, when you used Ubuntu or Fedora or RHEL for the first time, and probably for a very long time, you could get by without learning the deep intricacies of what is going on behind the scenes. The same is true with NixOS. The things you need to learn are different, but once you get a basic setup with home-manager setup you're off to the races. (Btw, I used this "book" to get started and it was great: https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/)

The best part about using NixOS so far is that things just work. Setting up my graphics card was as simple setting enabled = true. Same for configuring specific audio frameworks. And I had tried many times to get Davinci Resolve working on other distros and always encountered issues leading me to need to dual-boot Windows so I could do video editing. Now I just enabled Davinci Resolve and it works! No more Windows.

If you're brand new to linux on the desktop, I wouldn't recommend it. But if you've been doing that for years, maybe try NixOS in 2024.

i'm new to nixos too, i found this

I found this guide really beginner friendly: https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/

their GH releases page has a PDF, if that helps you, or browsing around the .md files may help what I presume is your noscript browser, assuming that GH works with noscript anymore: https://github.com/ryan4yin/nixos-and-flakes-book/releases/d...

It would be useful if the wiki articles showed a 'last modified at' date. Articles like this [0] dominate search results, but it's not clear how outdated the info is. I

In case anyone is looking for an up-to-date NixOS guide/cookbook, I've found lots of value in this [1] resource.

[0] - https://nixos.wiki/wiki/PulseAudio

[1] - https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/

NixOS is honestly the single most game-changing thing I've been introduced to in my last decade of experience in tech.

If you're interested in trying out NixOS I highly recommend either running it as an WSL2 VM[1] if you have a Windows machine or deploying it on a cheap VPS[2] to play around with.

I personally still use a Win11 desktop for compat with Adobe software and a few other bits and pieces, but I do all my serious work on a NixOS WSL2 VM.

[1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/nixos-wsl-starter

[2]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/nixos-hetzner-cloud-starter

I've been trying to encourage people to give NixOS in VMs a try as a safe way to build up a nice working environment while still maintaining your daily driver until you're interested in/ready to switch. I have a starter template for NixOS on WSL[1] with an accompanying walkthrough[2] if you want to get an idea of how much effort this might require on your part.

[1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/nixos-wsl-starter

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmRXXYxq8k4