There is a similar question on the site which must not be named.

My question still has a little different spin:

It seems to me that one of the biggest selling points of Nix is basically infrastructure as code. (Of course being immutable etc. is nice by itself.)

I wonder now, how big the delta is for people like me: All my desktops/servers are based on Debian stable with heavy customization, but 100% automated via Ansible. It seems to me, that a lot of the vocal Nix user (fans) switched from a pet desktop and discover IaC via Nix, and that they are in the end raving about IaC (which Nix might or might not be a good vehicle for).

When I gave Silverblue a try, I totally loved it, but then to configure it for my needs, I basically would have needed to configure the host system, some containers and overlays to replicate my Debian setup, so for me it seemed like too much effort to arrive nearly at where I started. (And of course I can use distrobox/podman and have containerized environments on Debian w/o trouble.)

Am I missing something?

    • mogoh@lemmy.ml
      91·
      7 months ago

      Who hurt you?

      I mean, you got some points, but went way over board with it and beyond the scope of the question.

      but someone decided that is is time to transform proven development techniques in the hopes of eventually selling some orchestration and/or other proprietary repository / platform like Docker / Kubernetes does.

      So, you really think, that this must be the reason immutable desktops were invented?

    • lily33@lemm.ee
      7·
      7 months ago

      We had Ansible, containers, ZFS and BTRFS that provided all the required immutability needed already but someone decided that is is time to transform proven development techniques

      Just so you know, NixOS is older than all of these, actually. And for that matter, no less flexible.

    • folkrav@lemmy.ca
      2·
      7 months ago

      I don’t know of anyone with a modicum of experience with cloud solutions that would pretend it is making anything “simpler” lol

      The only closed parts of Docker are Docker Desktop, which isn’t required at all, and Docker Hub, which is a repo like any other. You can load images from anywhere. It’s hard to take anything you say regarding container technology seriously if you seriously think VMs & Ansible/Chef/Puppet really answers the same problems as lightweight containers.

      MS did take some language servers and relicensed them, yes. Other language servers still exist, and the LSP protocol is still open, and used in many other editors.

      This reads like “Real Programmers Don’t Use Pascal”, minus the tongue in cheek tone…

        • folkrav@lemmy.ca
          1·
          7 months ago

          Feel free to point where I missed the point, cause I don’t see it. Outside these “functions as a service” things like Lambda, I genuinely struggle to think of anything that’s truly “hostage” of a big provider or just plain worse. Especially amongst the examples you’ve given.

    • wolf@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      2·
      7 months ago

      Sorry, hard disagree from me.

      Immutable distros solve a lot of problems and are IMHO a great idea. I love my SteamDeck with SteamOS, I really like Silverblue and OpenSUSEs MicroOS (Avalon or however it is called right now). For my desktops/servers Debian is the best choice right now, but my Thinkpad from 2012 which runs now happily as an entertainment machine is a perfect example where an immutable distro would be much better and practical.

      Immutable distros are a solution to a real problem, and this problem is not solved by Ansible/BTRFS etc. Hell, I’ll happily jump ship sooner than later. Of course, YMMV and I don’t say immutable distros solve all problems for everyone, but having this option is great IMHO.

      • Falcon@lemmy.world
        1·
        7 months ago

        Well I tried Aeon for a month and it has been the least reliable system I’ve used since, well actually probably anything, like maybe vista I guess.

        The thing is a mess and it brings nothing to the table over A/B snapshots.

        The scales must be different for enterprise use because I’d never go near another immutable OS again after this terrible experience.

        Maybe it’s just flatpak that’s unreliable on Aeon, I found moving electron apps into podman containers was a lot better. But on void it was fine, clearly a lot more work to do the flesh it out I goes.

        Tbf SB had far less issues than Aeon.

        • wolf@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
          3·
          7 months ago

          Some examples pointed out above, the big thing is the ‘immutable’ and bit for bit replication to the best of my knowledge.

          Ansible is imperativ and applies changes to a starting state. Immutable distros replicate a known state 100%, which is in every respect superior and prevents nasty surprises Immutable distros are 100% reproducible from a config file, which is a big thing for cyber security, building software etc. Debian has too many packages given the amount of contributors they have. The immutable distros are mostly moving to flatpak, which hopefully means that the Distros can focus their energy on a great core experience, and communities like LibreOffice can focus on creating a great flatpak experience.

          Nobody says that containers / and/or immutable distros are a good solution for your specific needs and use cases, that’s fine. For me, and after using Silverblue for some time (and btw. containers on multiple occasions), I am looking forward to jumping ship, because I like the user experience, declarative configurations are the logical next step when using Ansible and atomic updates in the backgrounds w/o the problems of package managers are great IMHO.