Tonight!
On 6/3/25 10:21, Russell Senior wrote:
Who: Ilya Chashchin
What: NixOS
Where: 1930 SW 4th Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97201-5304, Room 86-01
When: Thursday, June 5, 2025 at 7 PM
Why: The pursuit of technology freedom
Description:
NixOS represents a radical reimagining of the traditional Linux
ecosystem—one built on the principles of declarative configuration,
immutability, and reproducibility. By using a purely functional
package manager and configuration language, NixOS promises system
consistency, atomic upgrades, reliable rollbacks, and the ability to
precisely define both development and production environments.
However, these advantages come at the cost of adopting new paradigms
and tooling, including the functional Nix language, which can pose a
steep learning curve—especially for users familiar with conventional
Linux distributions and workflows.
This talk provides a high-level overview of the Nix and NixOS
ecosystem through the eyes of a relatively new Linux user with a
little over a year of hands-on Nix experience. It aims to demystify
the core concepts behind Nix, outline how its model differs from
traditional package management, and explore practical use cases like
reproducible dev environments, system configuration, and multi-machine
deployments.
Along the way, we’ll discuss the tradeoffs involved in adopting
Nix—from cognitive overhead to ecosystem maturity—and help you
determine whether Nix or NixOS might be a good, great, or downright
painful choice for your use case. No prior experience with Nix required.
Speaker Bio:
Ilya has been administering small-scale on-premise Linux environments
for nearly four years, both professionally and personally, beginning
with a custom Linux deployment on a proprietary NAS to better meet his
needs. With a background in computer science, he is especially
interested in programmatic approaches to system administration and
infrastructure automation. Outside of work, Ilya enjoys exploring
topics in software engineering, staying current with the FOSS
ecosystem, experimenting in his home lab, and modding computer games.
Venue:
PLUG is back at Portland State University. Thanks to the Computer
Science Department and to Andrew Greenberg for hosting us! The room is
in the basement of the PSU Engineering Building (also connected
underground to the Fourth Avenue Building, or FAB). Enter through the
Engineering Building. The outside door will be locked, but there
should be someone present at the entrance to let you in starting at
6:40pm until 7pm. There will be a sign on the door with a phone number
you can SMS if there isn't someone there to let you in immediately.
PS: We are going to need a volunteer to hang out by the outside door
until start time to let people in, let me know if you are willing to
do that. Thanks!
--
Russell Senior
PLUG Volunteer
[email protected]
