The key point is that all such tweaks to the system is managed in a one configuration file. While installing Hyprland may be a one-liner, configuring it and all other services from a single entry point is incredibly liberating.
Reverting changes are guaranteed to not leave behind any cruft, and you don't have to remember what you changed to make X or Y work: it's all visible in the (usually version controlled) system configuration.
Got a new computer? Just copy the configuration and enjoy a bit-identical system in seconds. Have an LLM tweak it and see the changes in the form of git diffs.
Sure, you can do the same with Silverblue and writing Ansible for everything, but it's not free of side effects (unlike Nix).
While nix might be free of side effects, activating a nixos configuration isn't as free as you imply. As an example, nixos keeps state around regarding user id/username mappings, to avoid giving the same user id to different users across time. So a fresh install of nixos might leave services unable to read their data files, because the file might be owned by a different user id. And if you activate and enable incus, for instance, it will probably create a bridge device: the device will remain in place after you remove incus, which will have implications for how your network/firewall works that your configuration will depend on but will not enforce or be able to reproduce.
Not an argument against using NixOS - I think the bridge device issue could reasonably be regarded as a bug rather than a fundamental design issue, and the user id/username mapping is a totally reasonable design decision which can be taken into account by forcing the user id numbers anyway.
> As an example, nixos keeps state around regarding user id/username mappings, to avoid giving the same user id to different users across time. So a fresh install of nixos might leave services unable to read their data files, because the file might be owned by a different user id.
> And if you activate and enable incus, for instance, it will probably create a bridge device: the device will remain in place after you remove incus, which will have implications for how your network/firewall works that your configuration will depend on but will not enforce or be able to reproduce.
To be clear, I don't use neither. But you can get NixOS to be almost completely stateless (if this is something you care) with a few changes. The power is there, but it is disabled by default because it is not the pragmatic choice in most cases.
How would "bit-identical" or "free of side effects" make an actual difference in practice?
Rollback is already very easy with filesystem snapshots.
Configs are already tracked by etckeeper.
New laptop: either copy the whole drive or the package list and dotfiles. Also, how often do you have to get new laptops for this to be relevant ?
Reverting changes are guaranteed to not leave behind any cruft, and you don't have to remember what you changed to make X or Y work: it's all visible in the (usually version controlled) system configuration.
Got a new computer? Just copy the configuration and enjoy a bit-identical system in seconds. Have an LLM tweak it and see the changes in the form of git diffs.
Sure, you can do the same with Silverblue and writing Ansible for everything, but it's not free of side effects (unlike Nix).