[GTALUG] Virtualized OSes... or perhaps pointing out the obvious problems in NixOS

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 12:18:08PM -0400, Giles Orr wrote:
> It seems a little late to retitle this as being about NixOS, although
> I'm going to address that.  But since I'm not retitling, first off:
> thanks everyone who replied about virtualization, this has been
> educational.
> 
> As for NixOS - after Jamon's mention of it a couple months ago, I
> played with it for a bit and wrote up a rough review at
> http://www.gilesorr.com/blog/nixos-review.html
> 
> Some points for those who don't bother to follow the link:
> - /bin/rm doesn't exist.  "rm" does, and it's on the PATH, but imagine
> how many scripts that breaks.
> - vi isn't installed by default.  this is a 838MB compressed image
> they provided, and they didn't include the POSIX standard browser?
> It's available as a package though.
> - if a package is installed at the system level, the package manager
> will still happily install the same package for an individual user.
> 
> Think about this last point: the user will now be using their own
> version of the package.  System-wide security updates are totally out
> the window.
> 
> I see the flexibility NixOS offers, but I think the price is too high.

It is an interesting design that is trying to solve one problem, but
does so by creating a bunch of other ones.  It is not a tradeoff I would
be willing to take.

Certainly the problem it is trying to solve is not one that has ever
really been an issue for me (the few times I have had a reason to use
another version of something, I have installed it in a small chroot
running an appropriate version of the distribution to run that version).

-- 
Len Sorensen