---
title: A few weeks with NixOS
date: 2026-02-23T17:57:57+01:00
description: The declarative approach is genuinely great, but NixOS clashes with my minimalist instincts
tags: [tools]
---

I tried NixOS for a few weeks. It showed me more about what I value in a computer than it did about itself.

The declarative model works. Your whole system lives in one file. No hidden state. No setup that slowly drifted from what you intended. I broke things twice. Both times I booted into a previous generation and was back in two minutes.

The tooling fits together. Flakes, home-manager, devShells. Version-pinned dependencies. Once it clicked, I stopped worrying about tool versions clashing.

But I kept working on my configuration instead of using my computer. NixOS has an answer for everything, and every answer adds a layer. I needed home-manager for dotfiles, agenix for secrets, devShells for dev environments. Each one reasonable. All of them together became a part-time job.

I want my OS invisible. NixOS wants to be understood.

Back on Arch. [chezmoi](https://www.chezmoi.io/) for dotfiles. [mise](https://mise.jdx.dev/) for tool versions per project. I understand the whole setup in one sitting.