Comment by mirpa

9 hours ago

I tried to list available packages on NixOS and nix-env consumed more than 6 GB Ram. Everyone told me not to use nix-env; everyone except NixOS manual. Trying to understand NixOS environment is a deep rabbit hole.

The Nix documentation is what drove me away from it years ago when I tried. I ended up landing on GNU Guix, where I have been for about 5 years now. I found the OS documentation to be much nicer (info pages!) and the decades of Scheme documentation makes the language easier to pick up too.

  • Seconded! I really liked Nix, but found the language and some of the tooling inscrutable. With (non)Guix I got all the Nix goodness, but in a form I understood much better. If Guix wasn't so good I'd be on Gentoo or Arch.