this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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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.
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I love Arch but I’d caution you against hyperbole like this. For example, NixOS has a declarative config for the whole system along with atomic builds that can be rolled back or switched dynamically. Not aware of any way to do any of that in Arch.
No, because while that lets you use nix to manage some of your packages, it’s still fundamentally limited by being hosted within the imperative Arch install. See for example section 2 in the very link you shared, which talks about starting the nix daemon at boot by messing with your systemd config.
how so? what is left after having the system daemon start at boot? this is a super common thing to do. If you wanted to go a step further you could even create a couple chroots or other immutable partitions to swap the bootloader to. This would be a great way to use the package manager and features of nix without the limitations. There is nothing proprietary about what nixos does.
The whole nature of arch is sort of a “roll your own distro” approach. It lets you take features from wherever and combine them. It’s perfect for anyone who finds themselves distro hopping.
You said Arch can do “literally anything” that any other distro could do, and I’m trying to point out that by having to issue imperative command(s) to set Nix up on Arch, you’ve already conceded that the entire state of the system is not able to be declared in a config file, which is one of the features of NixOS. So there is at least one thing that NixOS can do that Arch can’t. I imagine there are other examples (and not only when comparing with NixOS). So again I ask, can you please refrain from hyperbole?