Comment by allreduce
1 month ago
Hah I just wrote something similar today to periodically push backups to another server from my NAS.
I agree the systemd interface is rather simple (just translate nix expression to config file). But NixOS is a behemoth; Completely change the way how every package is built, introduce a functional programming language and filesystem standard to somehow merge everything together, and then declare approximately every package to ever exist in this new language + add a boatloat of extra utilities and infra.
I was referring to working with systemd specifically on NixOS. But yes, the Nix ecosystem is not easy to learn, but once it clicks there is no going back.
Not easy to learn is a bit of a red herring imo. Its also a disproportionate amount of stuff to hold in your head once you have learned it for what it is.
An OS is first of all is a set of primitives to accomplish other things. What classic worse-is-better Unix does really well is do just enough to make you able to get on with whatever those things are. Write some C program to gather some simulation data, pipe its output to awk or gnuplot to slice it. Maybe automate some of that workflow with a script or two.
Current tools can do a bit more and can do it nicer or more rigorously sometimes, but you loose the brutal simplicity of a bunch of tools all communicating with the same conventions and interfaces. Instead you get a bunch of big systems all with their own conventions and poor interop. You've got Systemd and the other Redhat-isms with their custom formats and bad CLI interfaces. You've got every programming language with it's own n package managers. A bunch of useful stuff sure, but encased in a bunch of reinvented infrastructure and conventions.