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Add to SafariWhen comparing Nix vs SeaBIOS & Kali Linux, the Slant community recommends Nix for most people. In the question“What are the best portable operating systems?” Nix is ranked 12th while SeaBIOS & Kali Linux is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Nix is:
Nix is a purely functional package management system. This means that the act of building a package does not have side effects, such as destructively updating or deleting files that may be used by other packages.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro No side effects when building packages
Nix is a purely functional package management system. This means that the act of building a package does not have side effects, such as destructively updating or deleting files that may be used by other packages.
Pro Isolated development environments
Nix allows the creation of project-specific shell and build environments which are isolated from the rest of the system. These environments are defined declaratively to ensure reproducibility.
Pro Can replace docker in some places
Pro Can use multiple versions of the same package
Because of the functional approach it takes, Nix makes it easy for systems to use multiple versions of the same package simultaneously, and ensure that updating or removing a package can't break other packages.
Pro The configuration works on "All machines"
No more of the traditional: "it works on my machine". When it says reproducible, this is the real deal.
Pro Gives you the full power of Linux
in going with this method, you will get the full power of Kali Linux (or your distribution of choice) depending on your model of chrome book the driver support may vary. You will have to research your model of chrome book and Linux distribution of choice to verify everything will work out of the box.
Cons
Con Does not work well for services on non-NixOS systems
When using Nix with anything other than NixOS you can run into difficulties with trying to start up services. For example, you can install docker with Nix, but it won't integrate with the host system's systemd leaving you to handcraft awkward workarounds in order to start the background service that docker requires. This seems like a critical flaw when using Nix on anything that is not NixOS, and it's unfortunate because this affects many of the packages many users would be most interested in using Nix to handle.
Con Steep learning curve
Con Cannot handle filetypes that have different semantics across different versions
While the functional approach that Nix takes is great for sandboxing binary artifacts of packages, it seriously lacks any power in handling configuration files or user data. It's difficult to upgrade and downgrade files where semantics and syntax can change between versions. Especially in Debian/Ubuntu it can cause severe problems where the upgrade process blocks and the user needs to resolve the 3-way merge.
Con Feels slightly over-complicated
Con You will void the warranty in most cases
Almost all of the official google chrome-books (See C720 series for an example) have a hardware write screw to protect the BIOS, To install SeaBIOS you will have to remove this screw, and in doing so you will void the warranty on your chrome book.
Con Removes Chrome operating system
If you go this route, you will lose access to the chrome os. It is not possible to dual-boot chrome os and GNU/Linux. Therefore if you would like to have the possibility of using chrome os in the future you will need to make a backup of the operating system.
