When comparing NixOS vs ChromeOS Flex, the Slant community recommends NixOS for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux distributions for an old machine?” NixOS is ranked 31st while ChromeOS Flex is ranked 39th. 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 Lightweight and fast
This is basically just Chrome OS which already runs on Cheap chrome books. It works well for web browsing and file storage on low end computers.
Pro You can try it via bootable USB
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 Limited hardware support
There is a list online of about 100 or so computers that officially support Cloud Ready, but it can also work on a laptop not on that list, results may vary.
Con Only really meant for web browsing
To use the software, you need to have a Google account and log in. Because it's meant for web browsing and researching, you won't find software like Steam, Office, Adobe Photoshop, Aftereffects, etc; or even a 3rd party browser other than Google Chrome.
Although there are plenty of alternative web browser online, and in the Chrome Web Store, which is still supported by Chrome OS.
