There is a similar question on the site which must not be named.

My question still has a little different spin:

It seems to me that one of the biggest selling points of Nix is basically infrastructure as code. (Of course being immutable etc. is nice by itself.)

I wonder now, how big the delta is for people like me: All my desktops/servers are based on Debian stable with heavy customization, but 100% automated via Ansible. It seems to me, that a lot of the vocal Nix user (fans) switched from a pet desktop and discover IaC via Nix, and that they are in the end raving about IaC (which Nix might or might not be a good vehicle for).

When I gave Silverblue a try, I totally loved it, but then to configure it for my needs, I basically would have needed to configure the host system, some containers and overlays to replicate my Debian setup, so for me it seemed like too much effort to arrive nearly at where I started. (And of course I can use distrobox/podman and have containerized environments on Debian w/o trouble.)

Am I missing something?

  • mogoh
    2·
    11 months ago

    Thank you for this in depth answer. It makes me want to explore Ansible and setup automation. Sounds really great!

    and write a blog post for people like me, how you did it, so I can learn.

    I am thinking about that … 🤔

    • wolf@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Really, Ansible doesn’t matter, the IaC part is the killer.

      Just start to put your config into code and learn, over time it will grow!

      I cannot go back to setting desktops/servers up by hand, IaC just solves too many problems and gives me peace of mind.