“In NixOS, the entire operating system – the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on – is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it’s purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this.” Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Finally, an OS that looks like a 21st century one.
Kochise
I actually did something like this some weeks ago.
I have a desktop and two laptops. One laptop is my work laptop and i didnt want to put funtoo on it because i didnt had the time.
A few weeks ago i had some vacations and i installed funtoo on it.
I though it would be very complicated to replicate the system i had on desktop but :
Just installed a small stage3 system, copied everything on /etc/portage, copyed the world file ( what would be nixOs configuration file somewhat on funtoo ) and edited a little of make.conf to represent the different CPU and Hardware ).
then … emerge -uDN @world and … next morning i had a fully replicated system.
pretty cool !
This looks very cool and sounds very promising. Will definitely be pulling out my old T61 laptop to try this out.
So someone finally catch up to FreeBSD on ZFS with beadm … or Solaris/Illumos if You prefer.
Edited 2013-05-18 22:16 UTC
I’ll have to give it a try.
The big problem from this approach (unless I missed something) is that updated dependencies are not picked up until you rebuild the package using them.
There’s also the issue of disk space usage, but as long as you are prepared for it, it shouldn’t matter.
All in all I like the concept (featured in OSNews in 2007), but it seems to throw in a lot of computer resources to get features that sound cool but are rarely needed, or achievable via simpler methods.
Unfortunately no much progress on
http://code.google.com/p/nix-os/