> These alternatives are far more familiar and easier to work with. You can get most (but not all) of the benefits of NixOS with far less work.
> Worse is better.
There are some potential alternatives out there that seem inspired by Nix but which are less strict. I think a system that offers and manages Nix's purity but doesn't require it could end up the final winner some day. Shea Levy had some ideas for eventually achieving this in Nix that he called 'Nomia' (probably riffing on the name of Sander van der Burg's Dysnomia, I'd guess), but his life circumstances changed before the project really materialized. But Nix still could be the place where that is first achieved.
Meanwhile new container image-building DSLs like Dagger¹ and Bass² look a lot like a Nix which is impure by default, and bash builders are replaced with BuildKit directives. And there's Denxi³, which looks more like a Nix that lets you reduce its purity when you want to.
For now, though, the Nix ecosystem is still vastly more capable than these alternatives because of all the incredible work that Nixpkgs represents. Nix we know it today could still end up the concrete basis for what succeeds it, and not just an inspiration.
> Worse is better.
There are some potential alternatives out there that seem inspired by Nix but which are less strict. I think a system that offers and manages Nix's purity but doesn't require it could end up the final winner some day. Shea Levy had some ideas for eventually achieving this in Nix that he called 'Nomia' (probably riffing on the name of Sander van der Burg's Dysnomia, I'd guess), but his life circumstances changed before the project really materialized. But Nix still could be the place where that is first achieved.
Meanwhile new container image-building DSLs like Dagger¹ and Bass² look a lot like a Nix which is impure by default, and bash builders are replaced with BuildKit directives. And there's Denxi³, which looks more like a Nix that lets you reduce its purity when you want to.
For now, though, the Nix ecosystem is still vastly more capable than these alternatives because of all the incredible work that Nixpkgs represents. Nix we know it today could still end up the concrete basis for what succeeds it, and not just an inspiration.
1: https://dagger.io/
2: https://bass-lang.org/
3: https://docs.racket-lang.org/denxi-guide/