When comparing NixOS vs KDE Neon, the Slant community recommends NixOS for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux distributions for desktops?” NixOS is ranked 19th while KDE Neon is ranked 36th. The most important reason people chose NixOS is:
Atomic non-destructive upgrades / rollback of a system upgrade / declarative reproducible system configuration / unprivileged installation of packages / transparent source or binary deployment.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro State of the art package manager
Atomic non-destructive upgrades / rollback of a system upgrade / declarative reproducible system configuration / unprivileged installation of packages / transparent source or binary deployment.
Pro Minimal
You can start with a minimal environment and add packages and software to suit your needs as you go along.
Pro Reproducible system
NixOS is configured using the Nix package manager, allowing your system to be replicated and kept in sync across multiple machines. Great for keeping a laptop and desktop in sync.
Pro Robust
Packages don't break after a NixOS upgrade as they are prone to with other distros (especially Arch).
Pro Works out of the box
Since it's built on the strong Ubuntu base, KDE Neon works seamlessly with a huge variety of hardware.
Pro Configurability
KDE Neon uses KDE as its desktop environment, which is highly configurable, but also has great defaults.
Pro The best looking Linux OS
It really is a great and stunning looking OS.
Pro Works well on low-end computers
Cons
Con Documentation is not good
A lot of the documentation of various functions is buried on the source code, their respective manuals, or non-existent. The documentation, the conventions, and the scattered toolchain really made searching for stuff easily missable.
Con A configuration change might end up bricking your system
Con Steep learning curve for beginners
It's a really sparse, bare-bones system, no automatic driver install for example. It can be quite hard for someone not used to Linux.
