They both allow you to deploy and update a highly customized OS across many potentially different machines.
Gentoo has cflags and cross-building
Nix has Nix configs
I somewhat disagree about the stability. Maybe it’s no longer the case, but i used gentoo for a few years in the 2010s and it was always stable for me. A buggy upstream release of a package could be a problem in theory, but if that were to happen you can generally roll back the package and mask it from updates for a while. I never ended up needing to do that. However i agree that stability seems to be a high priority for Nix devs.
The instability I had on Gentoo was largely a result of me setting up the system one way, deciding I didn’t like it, uninstalling a bunch of stuff poorly and then building something new on top of it. All on the same install. For a little while though, I had a G3 Mac running headless as a small NAS. Never had a issue out of it but then I also never touched it except to update it, when I remembered it existed.
I found that Ubuntu was a more stable base for my mucking about. Then I got my first real job (truck driving) and didn’t have time fix my system constantly and learned to just use it.
They both allow you to deploy and update a highly customized OS across many potentially different machines.
Gentoo has cflags and cross-building
Nix has Nix configs
I somewhat disagree about the stability. Maybe it’s no longer the case, but i used gentoo for a few years in the 2010s and it was always stable for me. A buggy upstream release of a package could be a problem in theory, but if that were to happen you can generally roll back the package and mask it from updates for a while. I never ended up needing to do that. However i agree that stability seems to be a high priority for Nix devs.
I’m tracking now.
The instability I had on Gentoo was largely a result of me setting up the system one way, deciding I didn’t like it, uninstalling a bunch of stuff poorly and then building something new on top of it. All on the same install. For a little while though, I had a G3 Mac running headless as a small NAS. Never had a issue out of it but then I also never touched it except to update it, when I remembered it existed.
I found that Ubuntu was a more stable base for my mucking about. Then I got my first real job (truck driving) and didn’t have time fix my system constantly and learned to just use it.