I thought I knew Linux… until I tried this distro

If sleek, technical, steep learning, and new experiences floats your boat, this distro is your new best friend.

I thought I knew Linux… until I tried this distro

Credit: Roine Bertelson/MakeUseOf

Roine Bertelson

Mar 1, 2026, 1:00 PM EST

Roine Bertelson is a Stockholm-based tech writer, translator, and digital strategist with more than twenty years of hands-on experience in AI tools, Linux, consumer tech, cybersecurity, and SEO-driven content. He's known for turning complex topics into clear and practical guidance that helps readers solve real problems. People trust his work because he actually uses and tests the tools he writes about, breaks things on purpose, and translates the chaos of modern technology into advice that feels human, honest, and useful.

Most Linux distros evolve. NixOS shows up, cracks its knuckles, and politely questions that entire premise. If you have spent any serious time bouncing between Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, and whatever experimental ISO you impulse-downloaded after midnight, you probably feel like you know the rhythm by now. You install packages, tweak configs, break something, fix something, and pretend the breakage was character-building. That muscle memory runs deep. Which is exactly why NixOS feels so weird the first time you bump into it.

Because this is not just another distro with clean defaults and a slightly opinionated installer. NixOS is one of those rare projects that does not try to polish the familiar Linux experience. It quietly steps sideways and asks a more uncomfortable question: what if your entire operating system behaved like something you could actually describe, reproduce, and rebuild on demand?

That is usually the moment seasoned Linux users lean back a little and squint in curiosity.

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NixOS treats your entire system like a build artifact

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Yes, including the parts you normally do not touch

[Extended manual built in to NixOS]

Screenshot: Roine Bertelson/MakeUseOf

Most Linux systems grow organically over time. You install something because you need it. You tweak a config because something annoyed you. Six months later, your machine works fine, mostly, but there is a faint archaeological layer of past decisions baked into it. We have all been there. NixOS looks at that slow accumulation of “it made sense at the time” and basically says: no, thanks.

Under the hood sits the Nix package manager, which uses a functional approach to software management. Packages live in uniquely hashed directories that encode their dependencies, which dramatically reduces the classic dependency knife fights that traditional package managers occasionally wander into. Instead of replacing things in place and hoping for the best, Nix builds isolated versions that can happily coexist. That part is already clever.

But the real brain-tilt comes from the declarative system model. With NixOS, you do not gradually shape the system through a hundred tiny mutations. You describe the system you want in a configuration file, and NixOS builds it to match. Kernel, services, packages, bootloader. The whole stack, treated less like a pet and more like infrastructure.

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The declarative model forces you to be intentional

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Which is great, right up until you realize it means you have to be intentional

[NixOS settings are straightforward]

Screenshot: Roine Bertelson/MakeUseOf

On most distros, configuration happens the way life happens: gradually, a bit messily, and with a strong reliance on muscle memory. Something breaks, you patch it, something annoys you, you tweak it, and the system becomes yours through a long trail of small decisions.

Your system lives in /etc/nixos/configuration.nix, and every time you run nixos-rebuild switch, the machine reshapes itself to match what you declared. Same inputs, same outputs. At least in theory. The goal is reproducibility, and NixOS takes that goal very personally. This changes your habits whether you planned for it or not. You start thinking before you install. You start documenting changes because the config file is literally the source of truth. You stop treating the system like a junk drawer and start treating it like something you might need to rebuild on a different machine at some point in the future.

If you thrive on structured control, this feels fantastic. If your usual workflow involves confident late-night improvisation, there may be a brief adjustment period where you and NixOS stare at each other across the room like two strong personalities negotiating boundaries.

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The rollback story is where things get quietly impressive

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This is the part that makes tired Linux users raise an eyebrow

Every experienced Linux user has a story. Usually, it starts with “this update should be fine” and ends with someone googling from their phone while the main machine sulks in the corner. NixOS attacks that entire genre of pain. Because every system change is built as its own generation, upgrades are atomic. If something goes sideways during a rebuild, the system does not typically collapse into post-update dread. The previous working generation is still there, sitting calmly in the boot menu like a safety net you forgot you had.

And yes, rolling back is exactly as satisfying as it sounds. Not magical and not perfect. You can absolutely still break things if you are determined and caffeinated enough. But the emotional tone shifts. Failures feel less catastrophic and more… reversible. As the system assumes you are human and occasionally overconfident. That design philosophy hits differently once you have lived through enough messy upgrades.

[Gettiing started with NixOS]

I spent a week with NixOS and it completely changed how I think about Linux

Use Linux without fearing updates, breakage, or drift.

Afam Onyimadu

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Customization goes deeper than the usual Linux promises

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You are not just tweaking the system, you are defining it

Most distros talk a big game about customization. Usually that means dotfiles, package choices, maybe a weekend spent arguing with your window manager. NixOS plays at a different altitude. Because the system is declarative, you can configure services, boot behavior, file systems, desktop environments, kernel modules, and more from the same unified configuration layer. It is less about piling tweaks on top of each other and more about describing the shape of the machine you want to exist.

That opens some genuinely powerful doors. Reproducing a setup across multiple machines stops being a weekend project and starts looking like something you can actually maintain without slowly losing your mind. The trade-off is accountability. NixOS tends to do exactly what you told it to do. If something behaves strangely, the answer is usually not hiding in some mystery corner of the filesystem. It is sitting right there in your config, quietly waiting for you to notice.

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This is not a distro you install while half-watching YouTube

NixOS is elegant, powerful, and technically fascinating. It is also not especially concerned with being your cozy beginner distro. The Nix language takes a minute to wrap your head around. The mental model is different enough to cause friction at first. And while the documentation has improved a lot, you will still encounter moments where the learning curve feels… intentional. If you are brand new to Linux, there are friendlier entry points.

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