Distrohopping Incident
This blog post was released on the fifth of May 2026.
I don't use Arch btw
I moved from Arch to NixOS. I had a wonderful experience and almost no issues, but NixOS is just built differently. Everything else is legacy.
So Arch was good?
Arch was brilliant. Only a few things ever broke, and guess what broke? Hyprland. Everything else was pretty clean.
I liked the AUR (Arch User Repository) and the package selection in general. Almost everything is made for Arch too.
Of course, the wiki was really helpful. I installed Arch via archinstall, so maybe one day I will try to do it the old way for academic purposes.
What is NixOS?
It's possible to discuss what makes a Linux distribution a distribution extensively, but the general idea is that your distribution is your package manager. There is the Nix package manager, which is used by NixOS.
You can use this package manager on other distributions as well, but NixOS is built around it. It also has a package selection comparable to Arch.
The main advantage of NixOS is its declarative nature. You define your system configuration as code, and NixOS takes care of installing and configuring all the packages and services you need.
You can always roll back to a previous working state if something goes wrong. That's one of the key advantages of this distro.
Yes, some things require different thinking, but it's manageable. I think LLMs can be a big help with NixOS configuration.
Experience so far
First of all, migration was pretty simple. Yes, my GUI is a little bit broken, but it's good enough for me. Later I can completely reconfigure Hyprland.
Second, I find this declarative approach more well-thought-out than what we are used to in the Linux world. That is extremely important, as the right Linux distribution can become accessible enough for non-technical users. It seems like it might be the case in the future, judging by the French government's move to replace Windows computers with NixOS-based ones.
Distrohopping lifestyle
Some people take their distro choice extremely seriously, so they might as well try 10 new ones in one week. For me, Arch always felt like what I needed, as it's bleeding edge and has a brilliant community.
That's why making the switch is so important to me. I really think this distribution is something different, like Rust compared to C and C++. Yes, it takes something from your workflow by making some things impossible, but at the same time it helps you solve a particular class of problems. I appreciate that.
Should you try?
Yes, of course, but only if you already have some Linux experience. If this is a new world for you, then I don't even know what to suggest. Probably Mint? I have it on a laptop already, but my experience is not perfect. I think it might be my next victim of being Nix-pilled.
It's really difficult to recommend a distro, as it might not be as important as your desktop environment. KDE is definitely the best thing for the majority of users.
I really enjoy tiling in Hyprland, so I can't see my next DE being too different from my current setup. I wish everyone was enjoying this kind of GUI interaction as much as I do.