Comment by perryizgr8

I've read a few articles about nix and I'm still unsure what it is and why would anyone use it.

From their homepage:

> Declarative builds and deployments.

> Nix is a tool that takes a unique approach to package management and system configuration. Learn how to make reproducible, declarative and reliable systems.

So is it some kind of CI/CD system? A package manager? But people seem to be running it as an OS? Why would I want to declaratively build my OS? Why not just use one of the hundreds of distros already available with lots of packages to pick and choose?

The install nix link on the home page seems to indicate I can install it inside linux. Does that mean nix is not a distro itself? Oh but further below there is a disk image too. Huh...

Its all very confusing to me. And that triangular image every single nix related articles uses is no help.