It's in no way "everyone", just a vocal minority.

NixOS is the only[1] Linux distribution that feels like it is build around Free Software. Meaning upstream Git repositories can be treated as first-class citizen and installed directly without convoluted binary packaging system (that still exists in the background, but only as cache to speed up build times). Nix also makes it very easy to upgrade, downgrade, side grade, patch, override dependencies or otherwise change packages, or even just keep multiple versions of the same software around. Something many other distributions still struggle with or make completely impossible with the distributions own tools. Even the act of installing software in Nix becomes somewhat unnecessary, as you can just run software straight from the Git repository.

And best of all, it's all based on a very simple and transparent packaging system, if you ever used GNU stow, kind of like that, it's all held together with a bunch of symlinks and some environment variables. No contains, no ostree, none of those ugly workarounds, just plain old Unix stuff that you can find and grep through as much as you like.

Simply put, NixOS puts the joy back in Linux, while other distributions like Ubuntu try to actively trash their reputation with a proprietary App store and others like Debian just stagnate around and are still stuck with the same old packing system that was state of the art 25 years ago and hasn't improve much at all since than. NixOS just provides a dramatically cleaner and simpler approach that also happens to be vastly more powerful.

Another cool thing, if you don't wanna switch distributions just yet and reinstall the full NixOS, you can just use the Nix package manager itself on whatever distribution you are already using.

[1] There is also GNU Guix, which is basically a reimplementation of Nix with Guile/Scheme

Here's the straightforward version of why I use it:

1. The entire state of your operating system is defined in a config file, and changes are made by changing the config file. This makes it super easy to reproduce your exact system many times and to know where all the many different configuration elements that describe your system are located.

2. Updates are applied atomically, so you don't have to worry about interrupting the update process and if it fails, the previous state of your system is still bootable. By default every time you change something, you get another option in the boot menu to roll back to.

3. Making container-like sub systems is super easy when you're familiar with nix, so you can have as many different enclaves as you like for different software versions, development environments, desktop setups, whatever without taking a performance hit. Old versions of stuff are very accessible without breaking your new stuff.

4. The package manager has a lot of software and accessing nonfree stuff is straightforward. Guix looks rad, but nix ended up being the more practical compromise for my usecase. I didn't want to have to package a heap of software the moment I made the switch.

SYMLINKS

SYMLINKS EVERYWHERE

(also 6000 packages intalled on my system for some reason lol)

everyone

Now that's what I'd call a stretch...

I have been using for years on servers. My lemmy instance is hosted on it.

Although for desktop I had too many issues back in 2019 so I ended up back to Arch Linux and then EndeavourOS

Would be fun to try again to use it on desktop

I daily drive GNU Guix instead, and I would strongly recommend any emacs and/or lisp enthusiasts interested in the benefits of functional, reproducible, declarative, and hackable system management to give it a try!

I keep seeing trends with Linux distribution like teenager looking for new fashion.

I think it’s mostly the very young Linux user who hope from one distribution to the another over and over whereas many just stick with what they got : Ubuntu, Debian, mint, maybe fedora.

NixOS is certainly interesting tho.

I didn't get it either, but this video does a pretty good job explaining why it's different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMQWirkx5EY

I will switch as soon as I can get proprietary Nvidia drivers to work on my laptop.

I used NixOS for a couple of years. My experience is like this:

1. It is a rolling release (mostly)
2. You write a declarative configuration for your system, e.g., my config will say I want Neovim with certain plugins, and I can also include my Neovim configuration
3. It is stable, and when it breaks it is easy to go back
4. Packages are mostly bleeding edge

I switched around one and a half years ago. I must say, there are some hurdles to using NixOS. Mainly I dislike that it always takes around 20 times the effort to start and project. You make up for the initial time investment, because you end up with a far more stable setup, but still it does take some willpower to get things started.

NixOS is a fully declarative and reproducable system.

What this means is that you can create a single configuration.nix, which includes all of your applications, settings, aliases, environment variables, user account + groups, etc., and copy that over to another NixOS machine (including different architectures) and run nixos-rebuild boot to completely reproduce the system on that other machine.

The nix package manager is also really good at telling you if the configuration will break anything, where, and how, and refuses to apply until the issue is fixed.

Also every time you use nixos-rebuild, it creates a new generation of your NixOS install meaning if something ends up breaking, you can reboot into the old system.

So for example, I can theoretically have the exact same configuration across my desktop, laptop, phone, server, etc., minus the automatically generated hardware-configuration.nix, which is specific to the hardware.

Also Nix supports package overlays, which means that you can modify an existing package while the maintainer still keeps it up to date.

I've been looking at it after numerous times I update Fedora only to have some tool break that I use daily. Then I spend a chunk of the day getting Virtualbox working again so I can do my job (write code for websites).

I haven't made the jump, but it looks very interesting.

Glancing over the website, I thought it's an immutable OS, like Fedora Silverblue. I could imagine that it might be cool to use with Ansible and stuff. But for an average user? I can't really see the advantages in respect to the work you have to put in.

For those who like a video format, I found this introduction quite informative.