Using NixOS for more than six months, and I think I’m eligible to say what I like and hate about it.
What you’ll like:
easy configuration - just refer https://search.nixos.org, it’s that easy. I’m not taking that comment about “NixOS being hard to configure” seriously - and this is coming from someone who hasn’t even learnt the language properly. Yes, my configuration.nix is slightly polluted with Starship configs, and I might want to break them into modules, but it is still a job done decently.
won’t break easily except in some extreme situations - Laptop accidentally slipped from my hand during nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade - I guess it was the physical trauma to my device messed up the mount path to /boot, but it was rescued by a single CLI command from the recovery USB, and I didn’t lose any files.
upgrade is not prone to breakage, and even if it does, you can rollback - just don’t walk while holding your device and drop it.
it is a serious distro, not a “hobby” OS, and the experiences you will gain from learning Nix will help you with SaaS platforms like Replit or Railway, if you’re interested in using them sometimes in the future.
What you won’t like:
Binaries do not work properly - since Nix store is a completely different storage system compared to your usual FHS, most of the binaries will suffer from incorrect RPATH and dynamic loader issues - you might have to autopatchELF them, which is kind of irritating. This is also the case for AppImages, by the way.
Nix language is more like a custom DSL and less of a general purpose language, so you’re gonna have to use another language for automation (Shell, Python, Ruby), which might pollute your self-hosted Nixpkgs - Guix fixes this issue.
The bad part about NixOS is writing Nixpkgs expressions. The repository is damn huge and it is hard to maintain spaghetti code, writing your own package can be pretty hard, there’s some “hack”-y stuff you’re gonna have to use for building in, let’s say, using buildRustPackage and buildDotnetModule, and you’re gonna have to work with a senior maintainer.
Honestly, if I had to avoid Nix, I would go for Guix, Gentoo or Devuan. But yes, if you’re a beginner, I’d ask that you refrain from touching NixOS.