Hacker News

Favorites Setup
Comment by p1necone | original | Nix wrote half of my debugger
[−]p1necone · 2026-10-10 Sat 23:19 UTC · link
Yeah I tried to daily drive Nix at one point pre AI and the ergonomics were just not a good match for me - perhaps I should try it again.
[−]pmarreck · 2026-10-11 Sun 05:06 UTC · link
I promise you that it will be worth it. Try again.
[−]californical · 2026-10-11 Sun 07:36 UTC · link
It really depends on the person, for me I have my own setup script that works on both Mac and Linux, installing all of my core software using whichever method is best for each system, I basically have a csv with columns of “program” “install command Linux” and “install command Mac” and it just works.

Then all of my dotfiles are backed up, with any important other config, in a big gig repo. And all of my documents/photos/etc live on a separate hard drive which gets backed up to the cloud.

All of that to say, with the right setup nix is mostly unnecessary, and honestly the benefit of not using it is that I can wipe my system anytime and restart it with just my usual important programs ready to go. Any mess made along the way gets purged automatically in every fresh install