1 yr. ago • 97%

I switched from Nixos to void Linux. Here's my experience so far.

I hopped from arch (2010-2019) to Nixos (2019-2023). I had my issues with it but being a functional programmer, I really liked the declarative style of configuring your OS. That was until last week. I decided to try out void Linux (musl). I'm happy with it so far.

Why did I switch?

Nix is extremely slow and data intensive (compared to xbps). I mean sometimes 100-1000x or more. I know it is not a fair comparison because nix is doing much more. Even for small tweaks or dependency / toolchain update it'll download/rebuild all packages. This would mean 3-10GB (or more) download on Nixos for something that is a few KB or MB on xbps.
Everything is noticeably slower. My system used way more CPU and Ram even during idle. CPU was at 1-3% during idle and my battery life was 2 to 3.5h. Xfce idle ram usage was 1.5 GB on Nixos. On Void it's around 0.5GB. I easily get 5-7h of battery life for my normal usage. It is 10h-12h if I am reading an ebook.

Nix disables a lot of compiler optimisations apparently for reproducibility. Maybe this is the reason?

Just a lot of random bugs. Firefox would sometimes leak memory and hang. I have only 8 GB of ram. WiFi reconnecting all the time randomly. No such issues so far with void.
Of course the abstractions and the language have a learning curve. It's harder for a beginner to package or do something which is not already exposed as an option. (This wasn't a big issue for me most of the time.)

For now, I'll enjoy the speed and simplicity of void. It has less packages compared to nix but I have flatpak if needed. So far, I had to install only Android studio with it.

My verdict is to use Nixos for servers and shared dev environments. For desktop it's probably not suitable for most.

71 comments

That is so the opposite experience for me. Every other distro for me just ends up weird after using it too long and I get the symptoms you mentioned. Nixos always stays perfectly clean for me like I never touched it. My hardware (long story) does change my experience a little though.

23
- Yeah there's a lot of state accumulation especially in home folder which I clear manually from time to time.
  
  In Nixos you can configure the impermanence module to clear unwanted state on your system and make it a "fresh install" on every reboot.
  
  11
edit: I do feel norawibb's point, the slippery mutability of Void is something I am a lot less comfortable with than I used to be. Apparently Guix has spoiled me.

19
- 🎉 Same! I've been looking at Ashos (meta distribution) or just using btrfs snapshots to rollback when I break something.
  
  3
  
  Yeah rollbacks are probably the best part of immutable OS's, but of almost equal importance is reproducible system configuration, which imo only Nix and Guix do well. Neither snapshots nor Silverblue really manage that yet.
  
  7
  
  My problem with snapshots is that sometimes I break something and notice it way later. This accumulated state at one point breaks something (i.e. I break something). With NixOS I'm forced to do things right, which is also annoying and time consuming.
  
  3
- Cool that you mention also the other contender OS in that regard. Interestingly you both chose Void as your comparison...I would be curious to why? @7ai@sh.itjust.works
  
  2
  
  I just wanted something lightweight and fast. It was between alpine (gentoo based), void and artix (arch based). I decided to go for void because it's new and an independent distro. I'll try the other two some day.
  
  3
In my experience, doing small changes to your nix config when using nix flakes seems to be faster. For me it only rebuilds everything when I run nix flake update before running sudo nixos-rebuild switch so it seems faster because it only does the thing that I changed instead of updating everything.

11
- Permanently Deleted
  
  6
  
  Are there any tradeoffs I need to accept to use this?
  
  1
- Yeah. Most small changes will not rebuild everything. It's just the core dependency updates that are most expensive. Like say openssl got a minor update. Now every package that depends on it needs to be rebuilt and rehashed because of the way nix store works.
  
  3
  
  Does Nix have Guix-style grafts? I know that in theory that is how Guix lessens the minor-update-to-core dependency problem. But I only use Guix for dev environments so I don’t know how well it works in practice.
  
  2
  
  yeah that's currently in the works (ca-derivations)
  
  1
How the hell many people installs Void without problems. I tried two times and I always had wierds behaviours that makes me going back to arch.

11
- Was it recent? I remember doing the same some years ago 😆
  
  2
  
  One year approximatively. But I elaborate a bit, I installed the minimal version, because I use bspwm. I had issues since the tty log in. Probably the xfce iso is OK.
  
  1
- Did you follow their docs ? Read page by page and everything should work fine.
  
  1
- VM. Always practice new systems in a VM. Took me half a dozen tries to get a fuckup-free Void install in a VM but only one on the actual hardware.
  
  1
You might be interested in trying Gentoo, which is what I use. The package manager is definitely not fast, but it is very powerful. You get a lot of NixOS-like powers, but it integrates seamlessly into the unix eco-system without NixOS' overhead or its unorthodox approach that causes trouble sometimes. It also has first class support for compiler optimizations and global management of compile flags for packages.

So yeah, updates will not be fast at all, but the rest I think you'll enjoy.

10
- I definitely want to try out gentoo sometime. My system is not very powerful. I'm afraid it'll compile for many days 😅
  
  1
  
  How many cores and how much RAM? I run gentoo on a raspberry pi 😄
  
  1
- fwiw I really like nixOS. I like its ambitious approach. But I think it's unorthodox approach is bound to cause issues. Most software has FHS and a typical Linux system in mind, and while nix solves those problems for most of them, there will always be something weird there.
  
  1
I also haven't noticed a significant performance hit from using nixos on desktop coming from arch a few months ago. Nix definitely does a lot of stuff and that can chew through bandwidth at times, but overall I think the time saved from not compiling heaps of aur packages has outweighed the time lost to nix updating and maintaining the overall state of my system on every update.

I tend to run relatively lightweight systems these days and haven't really noticed sluggishness compared to an equivalent system on arch. My desktop environment has been sway on both for a while and this may account for my experience of a leaner and more reliable system on both, but it's hard to say.

I'd definitely want to investigate bandwidth optimization strats for nix if I was heavily constrained in that area, or possibly move to something where cpu and bandwidth constraints were given priority over reproducibility. For my current setup nixos has been a game changer on both desktop and server, but I only really have arch as a direct comparison.

( For context, my current desktop nixos systems are a 9 year old low-end cintiq, a 2017 dell optiplex 7050 minipc, and a steam deck. They all have ssds and at least 12gb of ram. All feel super snappy for everyday work with a web browser and a heap of open terminals and workspaces. )

7
- Thank you that makes sense. When I get my hands on a more powerful machine and have less data constraints, I'll try Nixos again. I do miss it sometimes 😆
  
  1
I think the verdict is NixOS is perfect for desktops, since you probably don't care about data or compiling everything or slight inefficiencies

6
- Is this sarcasm?
  
  5
  
  It has to be! No one can hate themselves so much they deliberately go out of their way to use something needlessly slow
  
  1
- That really depends on what kind of computer you are using and how fast your internet connection is. Also a desktop computer should be (for most people) as little maintanance work as possible and having long update/install times really stands in the way of that.
  
  2
  
  Why? If it's installing singing in the background it's not stopping me from doing my work
  
  1
- Yeah I guess so then all those that remain are the benefits of Nixos 👍
  
  1
Very reasonable and insightful write up. Thanks for sharing!

6
- Thank you!
  
  2
I know you haven't used it for 4 years, but how would you compare arch to Nix and Void?

I'm asking because I'm using an arch based distro, but I've been eyeing both nix and void and wondering if they're worth trying.

4
- Arch and void are very similar except void has a smaller community and much smaller set of packages to install. Arch also has better documentation.
  
  Void is considered more lightweight because it uses runit instead of systemd and a choice to use musl instead of glibc.
  
  I feel for most, arch is a better choice of the three.
  
  20
Could you also share the differences you perceived between Arch and Void ?

3
- Void feel faster on old hardware due to systemd missing, the real problem is no-AUR imo.
  
  6
  
  Systemd won't make anything slower once the system is booted up, it's barely doing anything.
  
  2
  
  Benefit. If you never used AUR before and never felt the need to use it.
  
  1
- Other than the obvious things like arch having better docs and lots of packages, void reminds me of arch before systemd. Especially editing rc.conf etc.
  
  1
I’ve been experiencing a total system crash/hang due to Firefox or steam on endeavour OS. Never had such issues on nobara. Any idea why?

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- Permanently Deleted
  
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data intensive

I take it you weren't using flakes?

1
- I was using flakes. I gave the reason why it's data intensive. If a core dependency like glibc is updated, it's hash will change and all packages that depend on it need to be rebuilt and rehashed. It'll download all packages again even though there's minimal change.
  
  1
I only use nixos for my base configuration. All GUI desktop applications are installed through flatpak and development is done through distrobox.

1
- Interesting! Any reason for this choice instead of doing everything through nix?
  
  1
Really? In my experience NixOS is faster than Arch.

edit: this isn't arguing against him, i've heard lots of cases where Arch is indeed faster. For me though, I feel like nixos is faster for my use cases.

1
- You mean in terms of how fast it feels? I have never heard anyone saying this before. Can you share some details and perhaps some tips to improve performance on Nixos?
  
  What hardware do you run Nixos on and do you modify and rebuild a lot of packages on nixpkgs?
  
  15
  
  It's funny understanding these types of debates once you learn the structure. He's taken a vague offensive approach right out of the gate and put you in the defensive position (by design). Which means he's instantly made you the one that has to do all the heavy lifting while he just has to make baseless claims.
  
  14
Why do you not use Debian/Devuan?

-1
- There are many ways to answer this question and vica versa you can oppose all of them with many more, just select something that fits you
  
  6
  
  He is going for very specific configuration based good distros, which is why Debian/Devuan exists as one of the only answers to an Arch/SUSE/Gentoo user.
  
  0
- I'll try it sometime.
  
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