When comparing NixOS vs Slackware, the Slant community recommends Slackware for most people. In the question“What is the best operating system for a developer?” Slackware is ranked 3rd while NixOS is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Slackware is:
Uses stable, plain-vanilla packages from upstream.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro No package dependecy hell
Pro No package conflicts
Pro Reuse configuration
Pro Roll back updates
Pro Stable
Pro Most settings just work
Isolation and well-made defaults means for most systems changes there's a simple flag to switch and it will work with everything you've got.
Pro Stable
Uses stable, plain-vanilla packages from upstream.
Pro Strong adherence to UNIX Principals
Pro Ideal to learn more of Linux
Follows the original Linux roots. It still sees Linux as a free clone of UNIX so the distribution tries to be UNIX-like.
Pro Package management
Uses standard tar archives with shell scripting as packages.
Pro One more distro which is init based
Some users don't like to install systemd based distros because they increase booting and processing speed.
Pro Oldest surviving Linux distro
Besides Debian (which was first released in August 1993), it is the oldest still maintained Linux Distribution and was first released in July 1993.
Pro Super fast
Pro No systemd
Cons
Con Beginners Linux users may not want to learn Nix Expression Language to customize more advanced installs
Con Difficulty running software that's not packaged
You can generally never run "Linux" binaries without patching them or starting up an FHS sandbox. Some build scripts just won't work.
Con Not user-friendly
It is made to be KISS (keep it simple, stupid), so you have to do everything by hand.
Con Large size live ISO
One needs to vain 3GB+ data for downloading one slackware ISO.
Con Narrow repos
Doesn't offer the same amount of options as other distros do.
Con Niche/small community
Slackware is its own niche and has a small community.
Con Very slow release cycle
Hasn't updated in 3+ years.
Con Dependency issues
When it comes to dependencies, Slackware shows more issues than many other distros.