Nix vs PsychOS

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.

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.

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.

No more of the traditional: "it works on my machine". When it says reproducible, this is the real deal.

PsychOS is designed for older/lighter, 32-bit, i686 hardware with plans to go even further back with i486 (PsychOS486), i386 and older (PsychDOS), and so on and so forth as opposed to always trying to run on the latest hardware, not that it could in most cases anyway since 32-bit i686 operating systems will run on most x86_64 ones.

It lets you install old software for use with emulators like DOSBox but run them as if they were normal programs from the normal applications menu.

A lot of the programs are already set up for you. Just boot it and go. This is definitely one of the better SHTF distro's.

There's a yad-based tool you do not see on any other GNU/Linux distro in which you can simply right-click pretty much any file and then use the "QuickEdit" option to quickly edit small things about a file such as size if it's an image or video, convert the file, or even render the file if it's a Blender project. It's nice not having to open an image with GIMP every time I want to resize or convert something.

Most GNU/Linux distributions that include IceWM as a desktop environment option don't do too much to it, if a t all. PsychOS seems to have a customized or themed version that actually doesn't feel you with dread and still uses many of the keyboard shortcuts from XFCE.

Lots of command-line tools and I really like the CLIMax thing. It's a good tool to have if you want to spend time in the command-line but aren't that experienced. Also, it plays a quick, one-time ascii animation when you go into the tty for the first time.

PsychOS comes with a lot of Thunar Custom Actions, many of which as disabled, but they are there none the less; most probably just in case. Right-click on a DOOM WAD shows there's a menu item to play it directly using LZDoom.