prompter: How does nixos compare to a more traditional linux distribution?

assistant: NixOS is a unique and innovative Linux distribution that is different from traditional Linux distributions in several key ways:

1. Declarative Configuration Management: NixOS uses a declarative configuration management system, which means that the configuration is described in terms of the desired state, rather than a script that is executed to reach that state. This makes it easier to manage the configuration and to understand how the system is configured.

2. Reproducible Builds: NixOS uses the Nix package manager, which is based on the idea of reproducible builds. This means that the same package can be built on different systems, and it will produce the same output every time. This makes it easier to deploy and maintain the system, and to roll back changes if necessary.

3. Immutable File System: NixOS uses an immutable file system, which means that the system files are read-only and cannot be modified. This makes it easier to manage and maintain the system, and it provides a level of security and stability that is not present in traditional Linux distributions.

4. Modular Design: NixOS is designed to be highly modular, with components that can be added or removed as needed. This makes it easier to manage the system and to customize it for specific needs.

Overall, NixOS offers a number of benefits that are not available in traditional Linux distributions, and it provides a highly innovative and flexible way of managing a Linux-based system. However, it also has a steeper learning curve and may not be as well-suited to certain use cases as traditional Linux distributions.

assistant: The main difference between NixOS and other Linux distributions is that NixOS does not follow the Linux Standard Base file system structure. On LSB-compliant systems (traditional linux systems) software is stored under /{,usr}/{bin,lib,share} and configuration is generally stored in /etc . In NixOS however /lib and /usr/lib do not exist. Instead all system libraries, binaries, kernels, firmware and configuration files are placed in the Nix store. The files and directories in /nix/store are named by hashes of the information describing the built data.  NixOS makes it easier to keep custom packages as part of your OS configuration. Rather than writing custom, imperative install scripts to run when setting up your machine, you can simply list your custom packages in your system’s package list, and they will be built automatically.  However there are essentially two fundamental design mistakes in NixOS that lead to the problems with it. Nix developers developed their own programming language to do configuration, which is not very good and is extremely difficult to learn. This is exacerbated by poor documentation — there are docs for learning Nix as a language, and docs for using NixOS, but the connection between those two things is essentially undocumented.
There are many other minor complaints about NixOS that stem from this — patching packages is theoretically easy, but annoying to figure out how to do in practice. The second flaw is that NixOS does not actually provide real isolation. This means that all software needs to be recompiled to work on NixOS, often with some terrifying hacks involved. It also means that it's impossible to statically know what other packages a given package might depend on. Currently, the way this is implemented is essentially grepping a package for /nix/store/ to try to figure out what the dependencies are, which is non optimal.

assistant: NixOS' unique package manager separates all packages from each other, unlike the usual Linux approach of dumping their files into shared folders. This, combined with each package being immutable, ensures that every system configuration can be recreated from scratch and that no misconfigured package or interrupted upgrade process can truly break anything. The files can also be shared between several environments, so you don't have to redownload libraries whenever you want a clean slate for development.