[Nix-dev] [Bachelors Thesis] Studi-Cloud VMs managing with Nix?

[Marc Weber]

VMs:

Either you put the 'iso's on disk, then each VM has its own data on disk
(may startup faster) - or you "share data" and fetch it via network
(nfs or whatever) - like "network booting", then you can share,
ad you can have "one nixos host" sharing all mysql/postgresql and the
configs required to boot the different systems ..

Having many isos is not a problem - that's why nix has a garbage
collector :-)

The nice thing is using nix you can share the configuration and do both:
generates isos or do network boot (in theory - no idea whether a lot of
work as been done on this ..)

Some packages do depend no "nix" setups (eg /etc/*) thus may or may not
work on regular linux systems as expected.

But serausly, if the profs need etiher mysql or postgresql why not put
both on one iso and be done? Should students switch isos if they "happen
to require the other software .." ?

Because nixos can "switch configurations" there are more options: use
usb sticks, then each prof can provide his config and students can
update their 'usb clone' fast because only differences will be fetched
(doing as much sharing on the stick as possible).

Marc Weber