Comment by KingMachiavelli
1 day ago
> build an image from scratch with the packages you want
Using what? Using NixOS to configure a system is orthogonal to the system actually running the Nix binary. Nix/Nixpkgs provide well maintained package derivations and module configuration for the largest amount of software of any ecosystem. IMO it's far simpler than Yocto or Buildroot or the dozen OCI container builder ecosystems that go in and out of favor.
Using Nix of course.
My point is that if you care deeply about what is being installed in the image, size, dependencies, bloat, etc. then perhaps using the NixOS abstraction is the wrong approach. Instead of building "down" by taking things away, build "up"
> My point is that if you care deeply about what is being installed in the image, size, dependencies, bloat, etc. then perhaps using the NixOS abstraction is the wrong approach. Instead of building "down" by taking things away, build "up"
Those aren't necessarily oppposing points.
NixOS is a declarative distro. It also happens to come with some defaults that, I assume, caters to the commonly expected use case (and maybe has some historical roots as well).
NixOS is not a minimal, build-from-scratch distro. It's more opinionated than e.g. Arch. For example, it ships with firewall turned on by default (https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Firewall). Another example: the default list of packages is somehow Perl, rsync, and strace (https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=26.05&query=default...). Blanking this default to an empty list is IME harmless.
The declarative nature is probably the subtext the author is trying to convey: what are the things one can do to disable these defaults, to reach a very minimal system (ISO really) that one can then build as one wishes.
Seems to me that such boolean flags do not force you to think about "building up" or "building down". You just declare what _is_. Who cares what the default is? When you're building a minimal thing, changing some defaults is fine.