Linux Mint with i3 had served me well, but Xorg was starting to feel dated, especially performance-wise. It felt like time for a change in my setup.
That’s when I started thinking about what I actually wanted from my system. I could go the Arch route and live on the bleeding edge, or try something different and more predictable.
Then I remembered looking at NixOS a long time ago. The idea of describing an entire system in configuration and being able to rebuild it anytime had always stuck with me. The more I read about it, the more it felt like the direction I wanted to go.
Where I Landed
Today, all of my workstations run NixOS. The big win has been reproducibility - my entire setup lives in version control, so keeping machines in sync is straightforward.
The window manager kept moving, though. I started on Hyprland, switched to Niri for the scrolling layout, then landed on mango. Same scrolling layout plus a handful of others, and the socket seems steadier than Hyprland’s or Niri’s for custom stuff.
It took some time to wrap my head around how NixOS works, but once it clicked, managing the setup became much simpler. For now, it’s the perfect fit.
Debian still powers my favorite servers, though, and that’s not changing anytime soon. ❤️
Repo not public (yet). Stay tuned.