Earlier this year, I decided it was time for a change in my setup. After a year on Linux Mint with i3, things were solid but starting to show cracks.

Gaming was better than ever thanks to Proton, but Xorg wasn’t cutting it. My Ansible-managed dotfiles repo was working, but the workstations were slowly drifting out of sync. Apt was still rock solid, but packages were often outdated or missing entirely.

Arch Linux vs NixOS: Arch had the hype, the rolling updates, the endless tinkering. NixOS had the reproducibility, the rebuilds, the peace of mind. I knew which side of that fight I wanted to be on - and my love for declarative setups made NixOS the obvious pick.

Today, I’ve got a few workstations running NixOS. I’ve been ricing my desktop, installed my daily tools, setting up tunnels, tweaking game performance, and managing secrets with agenix. Excellent! 🤌

Why It Clicked

What made NixOS click was how everything fit together. A single command rebuilds my system exactly as I want it. Configurations are reproducible across machines. Secrets are managed cleanly. Rollbacks are reliable. For the first time, my setup feels fully mine.

The Rough Edges

NixOS isn’t without its challenges. Old Linux habits don’t always translate, and the documentation can feel scattered. The architecture takes time to really understand, making the first steps harder than most distros. But once it clicks, the friction turns into one of its biggest strengths.

Where I Stand

NixOS has completely changed how I run my workstations. A Debian-based distro? Hard to imagine going back. If I ever switch, it’ll probably be to something Nix-inspired. Debian still powers my favorite servers, and it’s not going anywhere. For now. ❤️

Repo not public (yet). Stay tuned.