> I blew up my Ubuntu install and switched back to Debian. I haven't missed Ubuntu at all.
What are the biggest drawbacks? I know you said you don't miss Ubuntu at all, but is there anything which is causing you pain because it works differently or is just missing?
On having your system be managed from configuration its sort of similar to Ansible. One major difference is with NixOS you can easily roll back to previous states of the system. That means both rolling back config changes and also rolling back package versions. That's something that Ansible doesn't really give you. NixOS also forces you to configure things the "right way" (e.g. you can't hand edit files in /etc). That is very good for reproducibility, but sometimes its frustrating when you just want to make things work quickly.
I think the biggest challenge using NixOS vs Ubuntu is if you've got some weird obscure piece of software you need to get working there's a better chance that someone has already figured that out on Ubuntu and you might have to do the work to get it running on NixOS.
On the other hand I've found contributing to Nix easier and less intimidating than contributing to Ubuntu. To add a package to Nix you just open a PR in the nixpkgs repo on github. I've found the community to be friendly and helpful.
I use a lot of LXD containers for when I just want play around with something in a non Nix environment.
Oh and I love being able to run `nix-shell -p <package>` to use a package without "installing" it.
NixOS is leauges above Ansible and similar. They are barely even playing the same game.
The TL;DR is that Ansible is given a description for some part of the system, then squints at that part and trys to make it match the description. This means that it doesn't unify anything that you haven't described and if you stop describing something it doesn't go away (unless you explicitly tell Ansible to remove it). This means that your Ansible configs end up unintentionally depending on the state of the system and the state of your system depends on the Ansible configs you have applied in the past.
NixOS is logically much more like building a fresh VM image every time you apply the configuration. Anything not in the configuration is effectively gone (it is still on the filesystem but the name is a cryptographic hash so no one can use it by accident). This makes the configs way more reproducible. It also means that I can apply a config to any system and end up with a functional replica that has no traces of the previous system. (other than mutable state which Nix doesn't really manage.)
Nix has other advantages such as easy rollbacks (which is just a bit more convenient than checking out an old config and applying it manually) and the ability to have many versions of a library/config/package without conflicts or any special work required if you need that.
It is a real usage recognized by various dictionaries (Merriam-Webster, Oxford, et. al). Doing a search will find said usage in the definition listings, and "a riot of color" seems to the typical example given by such. If I had a copy of the Shorter Oxford to hand, I'd be able to say which usage came first, and if one derived from a figurative use of the other, or if they both evolved from a common, now obsolete definition. But I don't have a copy of the Shorter Oxford to hand, so we'll just have to be happy that the definition itself is attested by various dictionaries.
It's not quite the Old Oxford, but Merriam-Webster is easier to search online and seems to appear that it's a confusing mix of both. "Riot" is a Middle English borrowing from French, where it meant "public debauchery" (now considered an obsolete meaning), but even in French at the time had associations with violent debauchery. The first uses of the word in English were as a noun and for "debauchery". The first uses of riot as a verb were figuratively in the "riot of color" sense, but even then implied violence may have been part of the figurative imagery?
The concept of "connectives" as explained in Frank Herbert's Whipping Star book comes to mind.
One critic remark to make: I am not impressed by the "complex looks" of the hypergraphs because the initial premise is that it does not matter how we visualise them.
You're picturing it "too honest": there are allegations of misconduct which I am afraid (given the bad quality of the recent official posts) might be true, see for example:
> Although these data cannot be used to determine whether transmission occurred from contaminated surfaces, further study of fomite transmission of SARS-CoV-2 aboard cruise ships is warranted.
Your statement directly conflicts with the initial comment that said "but a few years back I found someone had gone through the whole game without losing a lemming on any level"
Who's right? Who got the sources to back themselves up?
What are the biggest drawbacks? I know you said you don't miss Ubuntu at all, but is there anything which is causing you pain because it works differently or is just missing?