Linux

48363 readers

1556 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

104

Nix/Silverblue users: How big is the advantage if you already have 100% automated your deployments via Ansible? (self.linux)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by wolf to c/[email protected]

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

There is a similar question on the site which must not be named.

My question still has a little different spin:

It seems to me that one of the biggest selling points of Nix is basically infrastructure as code. (Of course being immutable etc. is nice by itself.)

I wonder now, how big the delta is for people like me: All my desktops/servers are based on Debian stable with heavy customization, but 100% automated via Ansible. It seems to me, that a lot of the vocal Nix user (fans) switched from a pet desktop and discover IaC via Nix, and that they are in the end raving about IaC (which Nix might or might not be a good vehicle for).

When I gave Silverblue a try, I totally loved it, but then to configure it for my needs, I basically would have needed to configure the host system, some containers and overlays to replicate my Debian setup, so for me it seemed like too much effort to arrive nearly at where I started. (And of course I can use distrobox/podman and have containerized environments on Debian w/o trouble.)

Am I missing something?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My favorite example of how idempotent NixOS is has to do with the DE. If you've ever looked at switching from gnome to KDE, or the other way around, most distros suggest to just re-install because each DE leaves so much cruft around and it's so hard to remove everything in a safe manner.

With NixOS, you just change one line in your config, and the DE is cleanly swapped.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Or you can add specialisations, which to be fair might require a reboot (system accounts might change during specialisations switch which will confuse the script trying to reload services for the now non-existent user) but it is how I have multiple DEs installed without their applications flooding the other ones, each with their own login manager (SDDM for plasma, gdm for gnome, greetd for sway).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Definitely. That's a great way to run different option together.

I was just using the DE as an example to demonstrate how cleanly NixOS can add and remove packages. The clean removal of packages with lots of configs is something that most distros struggle with.