From f9266bdf3489843fc0072a2192e0dd284eaa5c0f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?Motiejus=20Jak=C5=A1tys?= Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2023 08:51:44 +0300 Subject: [PATCH] add "nixos subjectively" --- content/log/2023/nixos-subjective.md | 59 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 59 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/log/2023/nixos-subjective.md diff --git a/content/log/2023/nixos-subjective.md b/content/log/2023/nixos-subjective.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45775dd --- /dev/null +++ b/content/log/2023/nixos-subjective.md @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +--- +title: "Nixos Subjectively" +date: 2023-08-31T08:30:14+03:00 +--- + +Previously I [bloggged]({{< ref "log/2023/end-of-summer.md" >}}) about the cool +things I did with NixOS. After publishing the post, my friend promptly asked: + +> Wondering what's your professional take on NixOS. Would you give it a short +> for a small-to-medium size server fleet provisioning? It felt rather involved +> and not very mature when I looked at it. Kind of a commitment, too. + +Here is my response: + +My journey to NixOS has been bumpy ride: it's been over a year since I looked +at first, and I still sometimes feel I did not escape the beginner level. The +learning curve is steep, and it is best to take it on gently or have a good +mentor nearby. I started by installing NixOS on my primary laptop, which was a +mistake. The annoyance of "I can do this in Debian in 5 seconds, and I am an +hour in without an end of sight in this thing" was very discouraging at times. + +I reinstalled my laptop back to Debian and took a few slow months to provision +2 personal servers (the thing that's detailed in the blog). Taking it slow has +been fantastic experience. The folks in Matrix are very helpful where +documentation, especially high-level, is patchy. Now I feel comfortable enough +to retry NixOS on my laptop again. + +Recently I realized that what I originally perceived as immaturity later turned +out lack of knowledge and/or lack of high-level documentation. Technicals are +good. Granted, I have found some bugs (though trivially [fixed][nixos-prs]), +but they mostly come from the power to configure it and thus the huge surface +area. Also, variety does not help: for example, there are [10 deployment +tools][deployment-tools] in the wiki ("nixops related" counts too). It is hard +to choose when I don't know what to expect, much less know what's possible. It +is also nontrivial to ask for a "high-level" advice: a beginner will just tell +their favorite system, not knowing the trade-offs or alternatives. An expert +will tell "depends on what you want to do". Moving beyond such answer requires +time and a beverage, which brings it's own constraints. In this concrete case, +I spent quite some time learning krops, which later turned out to be a +dead-end. Later moved to deploy-rs, which turned out to be a good decision so +far. + +As far as recommendations go. For smaller companies, especially where +developers are also taking care of operations/deployments/infrastructure, I +can't recommend NixOS enough. For medium-large size companies it would +certainly bring a lot of value (I can already see how many things mine or my +sister-team at Uber had to re-implement which come out of the box in NixOS), +but, like with anything that has a different paradigm, requires a mentality +shift, which may be very hard organizationally. + +There is at least one large-ish company I know that uses NixOS +([proof][canva]). I did not look, I found it by accident. I also know a few +folks in Tweag; their primary consulting stream is helping companies onboard to +Bazel and/or Nix. They won't tell who they are, but there are "quite a few, of +different sizes, flying under the radar". + +[nixos-prs]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Amotiejus+is%3Aclosed +[deployment-tools]: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Applications#Deployment +[canva]: https://opencollective.com/canvaofficial/expenses/115338