Having fun with NixOS

I decided to run NixOS on my personal laptop, replacing an Arch Linux installation that I've had for years. The idea of a declarative OS has a strong appeal to me, since I'm a big fan of declarative languages — SQL probably being the main one.

The installation was easy, and most of the software I use is open-source and is already in the more than 80,000 packages available for NixOS. I use my laptop mostly for music production and software development with Python, and it was easy to install Ardour, the plugins that I use, as well as the Neovim editor.

There were a few surprises along the way, some happy, some not as much. Installing the OvertoneDSP plugins, for example, required me to learn how to package binaries, and I did the same for Argotlunar, a delay line granulator that I love.

On the other hand, I realized I don't have to install pyenv in order to create isolated Python environments for development. I can just use a Nix shell to spawn a new Python version where I do my development.