this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Yes, that's the argument its being made.
I'm NOT (edit: forgot the NOT, lol) the one claiming that, just reiterating whats being said. Because I don't know and want to find it out with discussions. I think it is ridiculous, and don't think anyone should do that. But technically it can be done, seemingly.
I've been thinking more and more about this (the NixOS to Arch) and comments saying "that should be easy".
Dynamic linking creates a catch 22 to all of this.
You have to do the majority of steps live and can't reboot. NixOS doesn't follow FHS, but Arch bootstrapping requires that. If you force-create those directories and try to bootstrap Arch over a live NixOS instance, the binaries you compile will instantly break because they won't be able to find the dynamic linker (ld-linux) or standard C libraries (glibc) in the locations they expect.
At some point you are going to be using Nix's development tools to build out pacman. To get around the previous issues you would drop to a nix-shell to build the environment (which is one really good use of NixOS in general), but then you'd segfault as soon as you tried to use it outside the environment.
Even with the pacman binary present as soon as you rug pull glibc from memory, since pacman is needing the host's instance of that, you'd have a kernel panic.
I was never this specific, but this kind of thought process is what I always had and countered with. I don't think there is evidence this can be done to a degree, to be able to say that the distribution doesn't matter. I don't buy that, just to be clear. Maybe people claiming this are thinking of similar distributions, like Ubuntu to Debian and never had atomic distributions in mind or something wacky as NixOS.
Going back to what the other user mentioned, in the context of how people ask the question, I don't think distro matters. You have new users asking "What is a good distro for playing games? Bazzite or CachyOS?" Both. It doesn't matter, they will play the same.
Kali Linux would also be a completely correct answer to that question. Even back in the day I had Backtrack 5 running Dragon Age 2. And for security testing, what is the best distro? The one that you installed your tools to. Distro A has 200 sec tools pre-installed, Distro B has 400 sec tools pre-installed, but both have the same 10 tools you actively use so they are the same. Arguably neither are the best because that means there is 190 and 390 tools present that are just bloatware.