I am migrating to NixOS after runs with Manjaro/Ubuntu/RedHat/Slackware (pile-o-floppies anyone?).

In a few hours I was able to:

• Install on an old laptop
• Learn the core tools
• Understand the philosophy and enough of the config language
• Spin up a few QUMU VMs running NixOS … trivial !
• Started configuring adding packages I use

I’ve convinced myself that I will gain:

• Reproducible configs: no more accumulated cruft from random installs
• Easy rebuilds: low cost to restore/test/change systems
• Raspberry Pis are viable again: rebuilding after failures is trivial now

And that NixOS will do well with:

• Isolated VMs for sensitive tasks (with LUKS)
• Development environments
• Servers (Pi-hole, git, AI/OpenClaw)
• Safe experimentation without polluting my main system(s)
• Deployments to laptops, VMs, Pis, and cloud.