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]
