For my first few years of NixOS I didn't understand the point of the NixOS stable releases, since even on "nixos-unstable" I found that if my nix config evaluates, then it'll work. And in the very rare case things broke, I could easily rollback.

NixOS stable, for me, provides API stability. I can leave a machine auto-updating, and be confident that my nix config will continue to be compatible, and thus build.

Thanks to the release managers for the work that goes into this!

Consistently through the 25.05 period nix-darwin and nixpkgs would fall out of sync. I learned not to `nix flake update` too often as a result. It’s amazing that rolling back is as easy as it is, and that’s huge, but if you squint and reason that mise and nix solve the same issue, why not use the less opinionated, easier to reason about mise?

As time has gone on, more and more of my system is managed via nix-homebrew … effectively producing a Brewfile for the vast majority of my package needs. Why not just use Brewfile directly?

I really want to advocate for nix, but it feels like I lose the “why not x?” conversations with myself, I can’t fathom winning them against a less invested peer.

It's certainly not for everyone, but for anyone who's full time job involves managing runtime environments it is second to none.

Unfortunately, without a base level understanding of the entire ecosystem, I stay lost.

What, one month to upgrade to keep receiving security updates? How can you force 1-month upgrade windows every 6 months and who would go for that?

I use nix via flakes on my own machines (via NixOS), in my projects (with direnv), on my infrastructure/servers (NixOS deploying with colmena) and at work (nix-darwin and projects). So far the upgrade have gone painlessly, the only change I needed to make is how git is configured in home manager. I continue to be amazed how well NixOS works.

Edit: The only place I still struggle in adopting nix is on my phone. Last time I tried nix-on-droid it didn't even run, but I plan to try that again. Still new to Android (and GrapheneOS)

Rust is such a heavy dependency though, is it not? Is it worth it? Additionally, what does it add as a new project / software (disregard Rust here)? What was wrong with the previous one and/or what does this fix or add that justifies adding a heavy dependency? Seems like most of these projects are written in Rust though.