My switch to NixOS stable
On April 4th, NixOS 18.03 was released.
It is by far the best NixOS release so far, featuring Nix 2.0, major updates for the KDE desktop environment as well as the Gnome Desktop Environment, Linux kernel updated from 4.9 to 4.14 and glibc, gcc and system updated.
With this release, I switched from the unstable channel, which is basically the “rolling release” part of NixOS, to stable (18.03). I did that because I wanted to make sure I get even better stability. Don't get me wrong, even with the unstable channel, I had maybe two or three times in the last year where updating was not possible because one package did not build. But I want to be able to update always, and with 18.03 I get that (at least I hope so).
Also, because as soon as I'm on vacation and possibly without the ability to connect to the internet (or fast internet), I need a certain level of stability. And with the stable channel, the download size for updates shrinks, I guess, because the stable channel only gets small updates and security fixes.
I hope I will be able to switch from 18.03 to 18.09 in October without having too much trouble and downloading the world.
The update/upgrade process was surprisingly simple. The Manual explains what to do and it worked like every other unstable update: Executing some bash commands and then relying on the guarantees NixOS gives me.
Now I'm running stable.