I switched to NixOS after tripping over my laptop's power chord during an update, which broke Linux in such horrifying ways that I didn't dare attempt recovery.
I agree that I'm not sure the extra complexity is worth it for day to day use, but just the ability to avoid catastrophic failure and near instant setup on new machines is worth it I think.
Many times repairing those kinds of situations in Linux is as simple as:
- boot linux livecd
- mount your broken filesystem
- bind mount the important bits from the live kernel (/proc)
- chroot
Like this:
cd /
mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /mnt #Here's your broken install
mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs sys /mnt/sys
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
chroot /mnt /bin/bash #boom you are in.
Now do whatever you can to repair the system. depends on what broke.
usually apt stuff for me(pulled power during a package upgrade)?
>Now do whatever you can to repair the system. depends on what broke.
What needs to be done to fix the system may not be obvious and the fix may not be simple. Furthermore, the trial and error for fixing may leave a trail of new issues.
And that is why I use NixOS. I have to wrestle with it to get something working, but once I'm done I can guarantee it will keep working until the heat death of universe. Compared to that, Ubuntu and others let me get off the land fast but I never know when I'll crash or if I'll able to fly back from it.
Or you could, you know, use any kind of backup/restore software, spend like 5 minutes to learn how to use it, and use those many hours invested in learning Nix to watch football and drink beer :-)
I agree that I'm not sure the extra complexity is worth it for day to day use, but just the ability to avoid catastrophic failure and near instant setup on new machines is worth it I think.