[PLUG] ANNOUNCEMENT: Portland Linux/Unix Group General Meeting: NixOS, with Ilya Chashchin

[Russell Senior]

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
russell at pdxlinux.org