Remember the days when everyone and their pet iguana was raving about Arch Linux? You couldn't escape the ever-so-subtle "I use Arch BTW" remarks in every Linux forum. Well, move over, Arch, because NixOS is here to steal your thunder! Nowadays, it seems that you can't browse YouTube or read a blog without stumbling upon someone extolling the virtues of NixOS and how it is the epitome of computing perfection. But hey, who needs critical analysis when we can jump on the hype train and declare NixOS as the new Arch? Because that's exactly what's going on. NixOS has now become the self-proclaimed prodigy that's poised to dethrone Arch Linux as the holy grail of Linux distributions. The time is calling, my friends! It's time for you – the seasoned Linux enthusiast – to dust off your keyboard warrior capes and embark on a new crusade. So, grab your Tux plushie (or, your pitchforks if you belong to the world of devils) and let's embark on an adventure through the enigmatic world of NixOS (and let the memes commence)!
This article reminded me of how I haven’t run in a single dependency version conflict for years, I’m starting to get what debian users feel like seeing all this new distros fixing problems they never had in the first place
You can thank Flatpak for that. Dependency hell is real, especially on Debian, which ships old libraries. If you stick to default repos, you’re unlikely to directly run into dependency issues, but once you install a program manually or from another repo, it’s another story.
One example you may not have noticed, but which is a direct consequence of dependency hell, and a serious security issue, is for Firefox on Debian 11: it took around 6 months after it was EOL for Debian to update Firefox ESR. Twice (in other words, every single Firefox update on Debian 11).
There were similar issues for Chromium.
Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Web-Browser-Packages-Debian (same thing happened the year after, at least for Firefox, I don’t know about Chromium).
It’s almost like patience has its benefits, even if it means being forever behind the proverbial Joneses.
I tried using Arch for a year+, and spent too much time finding ways to fix things that broke with each update. Or fixing Pacman errors that made every package fail. Or filtering the update list to prevent breaking things. Or fixing the errors that using the AUR had introduced to Pacman.
On my debian PCs, I haven’t even had to deal with version upgrades breaking them. I’m definitely missing out on the latest and greatest for most software I run, but I much prefer the peace of mind not worrying about updates breaking anything. I’d probably be a more powerful user if I had taken the time to learn exactly how to balance everything in Arch, but sometimes I just want to spin everything up, patch any major flaws or issues, and then get on with doing what I set out to do. An OS should be transparent when you need it to be.