If you do then your golden. That’s the way to go. I dislike online things. Personal preference. There’s advantages going the GIT method as well.

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So what the main hassle of switching is that you have to run your hardware file to update for your new hardware, then inside your Nix config rarely will I ever have to edit things (maybe UUIDS if totally new machine fresh nix install/but I usually ssd swap for ease of transition and speed, or even clonezilla multiple drives and use as needed) even drivers for example. I’ve got auto scripts setup to run that will automatically pull any drivers or updates from the base system nix update to any drivers.

There’s really only two files you ever have to touch that I’ve used. Nix hardware, nix config. Once hardware is updated for which system you on you’ll never touch that until you boot a new machine with different hardware. If you setup nix how it’s supposed to be. Nix config is your master file. A single backup of that and when setup correctly. I can boot like I never left my machine. I’m talking librewolf still has my accounts open and logged in. VPN works. It’s all seamless damn near.

You have to learn to play within nixos sandbox meaning understand what your capable of doing and do it all inside config. With a few auto scripts, and 3 or 4 common commands on desktop page for whatever you wanna do and its terminal and memory hands off. I’ve what I call dumb Monkey commented my entire config and its in order if boot process from power on machine to boot, etc to shutdown.

A regular distro still poses many many more challenges when hardware swapping. You have different files to remember fstab, etc etc which can lead to mental memory load and system clutter if you didn’t build and maintain a perfect system from the beginning with stuff like files, sym links, all sorts if tweaks you’ve made over time.

So I switched to nix to mitigate those things. Now I’ve made a master config file copy, auto updates, backups, etc is all automated in the background now. All contained in my nix config. It’s supremely stable. Mental load is zero. Fills my use case. Immutable.

You have nothing to lose and only to gain. Pick any desktop environment and setup to your liking. I came from windows, to mint, to full custom nix all my apps, browsers, luks, apparmour, firejail, the whole stack.

I’ve tried live boots of many other distributions but this is the cleanest, leanest, most manageable of them all. My only true concern is project lasting long-term. For now. Aside from not having GUFW. I’m happy. I think there’s just a lot if misinfo and lack of hands on use from most people or incorrectly setup systems to utilize how nix should be ran. I think that should iron out over time.

I’m always on the go, swapping PCs, travelling for medical reasons. Buy, sell, trade hardware. Nix allows me to boot into my system as if I never left with a simple hardware config update script. Rock solid consistency.

Untrue. I came from windows, to Linux mint, then now I daily nix. I’m an average person who prefers to be terminal hands off. I did a full custom install from my mint setup to nix, apps, luks, the entire swap and booted as if I never left basically. I faltered a few times and had to select previous generations in my boot menu but honestly it’d because somehow I fucked up my UUIDs. The learning curve is there but let me assure you it’s minimal in terms of linux, and it’s dead stable because nothing changes without you doing it. In 1000 years it should still be running Unadultered.

I always aim at packages and issued inside my nix config cuts all this hassle out atleast for me… Ive got everything pretty meticulously commented and in order of boot process and in general running step by step order. I’m pretty sure I dumb monkey could figure out how it runs. I came from windows then mint then nix. To give you an idea of my PC knowledge. I think the whole point if nix is to keep the system contained and not scattered. I see many posters mentioning system scatter on nix as an issue and I have no idea how theu managed to complicate one if the simplest systems I’ve ever used as far as clean, tidy, goes.

Way over complex lol. I don’t copy anything to online source for better or worse. I auto script backups. The only backups you’ll ever need are nix config. Nothing else aside from your home folder obviously. With those two you can boot on any machine, anytime, as if you never left. I am not shilling. It’s been dead stable so far, aside from tweaks I done to break my own builds testing.

Unsure about dislikes. You have any desktop spin as you want, complete freedom, immutable, a single small file governs your entire system. I daily Nix currently and I haven’t found an easier distro. I’m not super advanced and I did a full custom build, luks, tweaks, full app installs from scratch. Booted up as if I never left my old PC. Nix is the shit. Most everyone’s concerns are overblown. Most haven’t used it beyond a simple test run or few. The slight learning curve of your config syntax and that’s it. I came from mint then from windows. Newcomers you can do it too!!

I think you over complicating your view here. I daily nix. Your not carrying a bunch if dot files. You have one. A single nix. Config. That’s it. It’s not big, long, messy, what so ever. I have mine commented by section from boot order to auto updates and backups. Your talking about 150 lines of extremely short and almost self explanatory code. I came from mint having never used nix. I figured it out doing a custom luks install and the whole custom build from scratch in no time.

Your diff issue is overblown. The edits you make are small and you cannot get lost in multiple configs unless your doing entire system writes which you would never do. I use a dead light weight diff GUI or terminal. This has to be one if the cleanest, maintenance free distros I have ever used.

It doesn’t seem you have truly driven Nix with this take. No program writes directly to your config, even if there was say your temp scenario you reboot and temps would wipe away like you never did them unless you rebuild nix config. Most of your concerns would fall away once you really drove nix to see how it functions.

I’ve used nixos exclusively lately. It’s been awesome. No system scatter, clutter. It’d immutable. There’s very slight driver hassle (you don’t have GUI for drivers so a simple terminal command fetches everything you need.) in cinnamon. I came from mint. I have all basic commands in executable files on desktop for ease of hassle. It’s not about rebuilding the system. Its about being hands off. Next to zero maintenance because not much in your system gets altered. I went for a full custom install from terminal. The only thing I personally miss being GUI is a firewall like UFW or GUFW.

Overall its more rock solid and workable than likely every distro I have ever tried. The feature set is nice, easy rollbacks, fucking cake backups. All you have to know is your entire system lives on one small editable file called nix. Configuration. Keep it in a micro SD or USB or any backup and it’s as if you never left. Any changes you want you simply tweak in the config then reboot. If it breaks then select your previous gen number on boot and your exactly where you was before.

I diff my edits and keep copies, run auto backups, and more. It’s so hands off that I haven’t found a better replacement yet. My single biggest concern is long-term viability in the project.

Newegg isn’t so bad. Do a shit corporate like best buy.

You didn’t have to point out 2016 was nearly 10 years ago. The oldies don’t need reminded time is flying by!

KDE is too deep on options and is heavier to run on PC resources not a lot but I’m a lean builder, especially for gaming rigs.

KDE bazzite app names are not easy to understand like mint at all. Workflow is different, menus, options. The reason mint is so highly spoken of and recommended is because it’s truly refined and polished for the GUI user. App names are sane/understandable, system functions are low maintenance and hands off once basic setup is done. Drivers are all automatically handled for the most part.

The only thing I noticed with bazzite that could be considered superior is immutability. That’s it. Everything else seemed somewhat a step backwards and you can gain all the codecs and drivers in mint mostly again automatically as you plug in your hardware the system will reconfigure itself. With proper backups, as you should always have, mint provides nearly the same guarantees. Keep extension, applets, desklets low count and don’t modify the system to an inane amount it’ll remain dead stable either in LMDE6 or Ubuntu main version.

I have distro hopped many times for various reasons, hassle and headaches days weeks in terminal borking shit. Bazzite, Fedora, NIXos, Mint, Qubes, LMDE6, and several others. I’m not saying don’t test the waters on other distros but believe me and everyone. FOMO IS REAL. The grass is not always greener on the other side. Especially with transition changes and relearning. Keep it simple. Enjoy your PC.

(Use a live USB don’t reinstall your entire system multiple times you’ll get fed up and hate Linux, put your home folder on its own partition on your drive then aim any OS at it you end up choosing this is smarter for many reasons than hopping distros)

Mint is so highly recommended because it’s one of and arguably the best/first distro to offer a plug and play, damn near seamless experience on Linux for the average person looking to ditch Windows and doing about anything. Most distros on Linux are somewhat the same loosely anyhow. You can tweak and harden mint nearly the same as any other distro.

Hope this helps. I game on Mint and daily drive it personally for the last 2 years atleast. Aside from some Indie games 1 or 2 of them. It’s been nearly seamless. About the only times I broke my system was well when I was doing stuff I thought I could improve. Keep it simple stupid. Best of luck.

This but what they forgot is on multiple drives. Power failures, drive failures, lost, stolen, dropped, you name it. A good set of backups is fucking worth everything peace of mind and more. Automate your backup process and never look back!!!

Bazzite is a lot less user friendly than mint in major ways. You get everything in mint as you do on Bazzite. I switched to Bazzite and it lasted 2 days before going back to mint. KDE is too deep unnecessarily so. Bazzite doesn’t gain you much at all, at this point in time 3 years ago or so I’d not said the same thing. Mint is so polished for gaming shit usually just works now. It’s not worth the hype, hassle. I’ve distro hopped and always came back to mint.

Source is I been there and done all that and more. Your not missing out on anything. Spin up a live USB and try it but believe me dearly it’s not worth moving all your stuff reinstalling etc etc. Keep the work flow you got and master it. Other options have more maintenance and headaches.

Which laptop? We gotta know who to light up the pitch forks for.

Mint is step 1. Shit just works. Welcome to graduation.

You have some decent hardening, just note x11 is turning legacy, wayland seems to be picking up for many reasons. I’m only slightly familiar with Debian as a whole. I’d look into firejail, app armour, firetools GUI for Firejail, flatseal, and good backup plans.

I discovered NIXos a few days ago and while it was a steep learning curve to set up! And I mean a learning curve and steep in all senses. It’s quite possibly the smoothest, simplest distro I’ve ever used once you make it run. Instant rollbacks in grub. It boots in grub in order. Boot 23 works you tried tweaking boot 24 failed, you made it work boot 25. Got mad. Select boot 23 in grub and your back to square one. 10 seconds.

Due to the nature of it you can choose like any desktop type you’d like from xfce to cinnamon or names I never heard of even headless, and literally any of them gnome, KDE, you name it. I like simplicity. Low mental load. Immutable is a chef’s kiss but configurable strikes my fancy.

I loathe getting scattered it symlinks, scripts, having files I forget about scattered all through my system, shit updates and breaks because I firejailed an app from 2 years ago. So much hassle. I like to boot and go. Keeping all if my configs in literally 2 nix files is fantastic, no more where did this go, or where did this write to. It will never change, update and break, it’s like a master key that will forever work. Just don’t lose your config and any hardware, any time, if you have your master file you can boot in like you was at your machine the time you left.

I still think about my first love, Linux mint so I installed cinnamon and now I feel I got the best of both worlds. I nearly gave up after a few days OK like 4 or 5 lol of attempting a custom install of NIX, full luks from boot to home, all my installed apps and configs, separated partitioning, containerized apps, I went all out. Idles at 1% CPU themed and applets, desklets, conky, etc. Created a couple copies of my NIX config file and I feel fairly safe. I built it all and tweaked then compiled it all finalized. Once you understand the concepts in their coding style, it’ll click in your brain.

I went straight from Windows, to Mint for 2 years barely touching terminal. Now with a little internet research for commands. I can crawl through almost any issue. I’ve broken so much stuff. But atleast it wasn’t a windows update borking/bricking my entire PC into a paperweight again. I chose to experiment. I’ve cussed myself so many times. But anything is better than going backwards.

I didn’t know it existed. Whoops. I will definitely check it out over silver blue.

I have never played with Gentoo. I will take a look at it. I never really heard about it much.