Comment by sunshine-o 4 days ago
I really like Nix but recently I ended up in a very tricky situation:
If you you are cut from the internet or end up with a very slow connection you can end up totally blocked. As a minor configuration change can require you to download a lot of data.
I also found out there is not much you can do to protect you from this.
Yes but the problem is the underlying complexity of modern systems. Actually kudos to NixOS for hiding it very well from you. My system is fully configured with flakes and in practice the smallest change in configuration can trigger the need for connectivity, usually to download a new dependency.
I mean if you have VMs in the cloud, who cares. If you have a laptop or a small network that require to be fully operational even if connectivity is lost, think about it twice.
Easy keyboard access is also a baked in assumption.
I found my way to Nix because I wanted to try SteamOS on nicer hardware than the Steam Deck. Bazzite is the recommendation in that space now, but at the time, there were a lot of equally unknown options. There's a community called Jovian that has replicated the SteamOS setup atop NixOS, using Valve's own sources. Using official sources and taking the chance to learn a new functional programming language seemed like as good a place to start as any.
When it works, it's great; however, +1 to all the gripes.
_Everything_ in Nix is set by writing to a text file and calling a CLI to rebuild. If you don't have ready access to a keyboard, you might not be able to so much as change the timezone. You can end up on obsolete versions of evergreen software like Chrome too, because Nix wants to own everything, and nothing changes until you rebuild.