Why I Ditched Traditional Linux for NixOS

Let’s be honest: managing a Linux system used to feel like herding cats - except the cats were configuration files, and they kept rearranging themselves every time I updated something.<br>I used to tinker with Ubuntu, Arch, and even Fedora in my spare time. All of them had their charms. But over the years, I found myself spending more time trying to reconstruct my system than actually using it. A misplaced line in /etc/nginx/sites-available, a package installed via pip that broke python3, a kernel update that nuked my WiFi… you know the drill.<br>Then I discovered NixOS, and it changed everything for me.<br>The biggest epiphany wasn’t the “declarative configuration” jargon - it was the sheer peace of mind. My entire system - from the desktop environment and window manager, to my shell aliases, SSH keys, and even the wallpaper - can live in a single configuration.nix file. And yes, that file is in a private Git repo. No more hunting through /etc for the correct config file.<br>If I need to reinstall I can just boot the live USB, clone the repo, run a couple of commands and there is my system just as I left. Exactly the same, down to the font rendering settings. No guesswork. No “but it worked on my machine”.<br>Because the Nix language can be applied to individual projects as well I can share this with colleagues - even if they’re on macOS or another Linux distro - and they can spin up my exact development environment with a single command. No more “install this, then that, then pray it doesn’t conflict with your existing setup”.<br>NixOS is deterministic. If two people use the same config, they get the same system - down to the cryptographic hash of every binary. No “it works for me” excuses. And if I screw up? Rollback. Just boot the previous generation from the boot menu, and you’re back to last week’s perfectly functional state. No bricking. No panic.<br>And the package ecosystem? nixpkgs has almost everything. It's one the richest software repositories in existence and it's well maintained. Even niche scientific software and obscure game engines. If it’s open source, it’s probably already packaged - and built from source with reproducible hashes, so you know it’s not tampered with.<br>This isn’t just a distro. It’s a philosophy: systems should be predictable, shareable, and recoverable. Nix brings order to the chaos.<br>I’ve never looked back.<br>If you’re tired of your Linux system feeling like a Rube Goldberg machine built with duct tape and hope - give NixOS a try. You might just find your system finally behaves like it should.

Read more

AI on the (relatively) cheap. How I self-host my local assistant

Why self-host AI?

Whether you love or hate AI it is a big thing right now. I try to take a pragmatic approach: use it for the boring bits because I want to save the interesting bits for myself. But you don't need frontier models for these

What is "self-hosting" and why do I it?

I'm a big fan of self-hosting my online services. It's something I've always tried to achieve but often failed, either because the maintenance time cost was too high, or the technology simply wasn't mature, or both.

I've always been

Restoring my 10 year old WebGL Minecraft clone

TL;DR; Here's the running application.

10 years ago I built a Minecraft clone, but with a twist. At the time I was doing a lot of STEM activities, introducing children to programming for the first time. The Raspberry Pi was in full swing and was popular as

Simulating a USB MIDI device with an ESP32 using Rust

Imagine plugging an ESP32 into your computer’s USB port - and suddenly, your OS detects a brand-new MIDI device. You connect your phone to the WiFi network the ESP32 is hosting, open your browser, and - boom - a web keyboard appears. You play notes on it, and they’re instantly

Powered by Ghost