Note: NixOS Feedback Handling

I think that one of the greatest hallmarks of a good engineer is when they are aware of their own fallibility. "Failure is always an option" as the Mythbusters used to say. In this age of hype driven marketing, it is surprising to find official communication channels of a software project embracing this mindset by promoting critical voices.

You can imagine how surprised I was when I saw that the official NixOS account on mastodon did exactly that by boosting (also known as retweeting) a highly critical blogpost by Jono Finger, in which he advises against using NixOS for desktop scenarios.

Everything that is said in that post is, in my humble opinion, true, even though I would come to a different conclusion, but this might come down to personal opinion. However, I think that this mindset of actively amplifying criticism is an undeniable advantage of and quite refreshing for a software project in general. Admitting that things are not perfect is the first step needed to improve them.

Seeing how far Nix and NixOS have come in the years since I started working with them, with things like flakes and devenv, I am optimistic that the community will overcome the issues that have been pointed out in the post above if they can maintain this attitude. As a NixOS user myself I am thrilled to see where the ride will take us next.