I had been using Linux on and off for the past few years, but now I’ve been using it consistently without any breaks, and I feel like I’m not turning back. I like the idea of having a bit more control.
When I first started, I would always break something. I copied commands from everywhere just to make things work, but it always ended up messy. I wanted to go back to what I started with. I thought about regular backups, but they never made much sense to me I wasn’t really making meaningful changes that I’d want to back up. What I really wanted was to be able to restore my environment back to how it was initially.
I was always afraid of breaking things any time I ran a command I didn’t fully understand. It gave me a sense of responsibility I felt I had to know what I was doing before I tried anything in the terminal. But I never liked that feeling of fear. I had complete control, but at the same time, I felt incompetent. I would always break something, and I worried, what if I was in the middle of something important, and instead of focusing on the actual work, I got stuck just fixing my environment?
I had no idea what kinds of possibilities were out there. I was living in a bubble, an empty bubble that I thought was the whole universe. And when it popped, I always found myself falling back to Windows.
Still, from time to time, I would come back to flirt a little with Linux. I tried Ubuntu, Mint, Kali, Arch (btw), and even dared to try Gentoo. I even imagined compiling everything from source. But I never felt at home because as soon as I built that home, I would break it.
One fine mid-night, I lied down with half dead eyes but tried to really focus on my problem. I framed the outcome I wanted, and unknowingly, I started searching for a solution. I looked into package managers, into snaps and flatpaks. I imagined if containerization could help, so I explored that. And then, for the first time, I stumbled upon Nix.
Normally, I might have just walked past it, I’d never heard of it before but this time, I didn’t. I looked into it, and suddenly, my whole problem was re-framed, with a solution sitting right in front of me.
For the first time, I was genuinely excited to dive in without any fear. I wasn’t afraid of breaking things anymore because with just a snap of my fingers, I could roll everything back. I don’t know much about Nix yet, but I’m all in. A reproducible environment feels like magic. It takes away some control but it serves my problem with enough control in hand.
It compels me to learn Bash. It compels me to learn Nix. It compels me to learn more about Linux itself. It compels me to be better and motivates me to create. It's creative work.
I liked the idea and I started with Nix
I might not end up sticking with it but I would sure end up being better.