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Add to SafariWhen comparing Nix vs Archcraft, the Slant community recommends Archcraft for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux distributions for desktops?” Archcraft is ranked 68th while Nix is ranked 75th. The most important reason people chose Archcraft is:
One of the prettiest distros out there IMHO.
Specs
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 Minimal & beautiful
One of the prettiest distros out there IMHO.
Pro User friendly install guides on site
Easy to follow guides for newbies or those who want a little guidance.
Pro Pacman more stable
In my opinion, Pacman is a better choice than apt. Perhaps Linux Distros should consider migrating.
Pro Active & responsive dev
The dev is very active & is constantly improving the distro. New ISOs released regularly.
Pro Well organized
The dev made this one of the best Distros and easy to add/remove deesktops or wm without breaking the system.
Pro Worth the Donation
The effort and work put in is evident, doesn't look finished half way
Pro Lovely UI Design with an Attractive menu
The developers made sure this distro was crafted well. Really nothing I would change, and the default ensure you won't be installing malware.
Pro Not just a Website with some Ghostfiles
The Site is informative and gives a nice insight into what you can expect from this beautiful distro. For the first time ever for me no customization needed everything is perfect.
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
