I used to follow the latest stable channel. After embracing flakes (which made version pinning easy and integrated), I've moved to just pinning unstable for the fresh packages. I update the flake about once a month, when I have spare time to deal with potential breakages in case there's any.
nixos
All about NixOS - https://nixos.org/
I update my flake inputs almost every time I use my PC (sometimes multiple times a day), and the only thing that breaks (rarely) is sddm, which is fixed by rebuilding again from TTY.
Interesting. How often does it trigger mass re-download from the binary cache? I'm on a not-so-fast home internet connection, so if mass rebuilds occur too often, I would spend a lot of time waiting for the downloads.
...every time
I use a fork (with some stuff I haven't cleaned up enough to PR) that I rebase on master whenever I decide to upgrade, because I like maximum pain.
Although honestly it's still really stable. When something breaks, it's usually easy to bisect and fix.
You basically use master? Holy sh*t dude, good luck with that.
If you just want to have some packages that aren't in nixpkgs, then why not just create a custom flake?
Well I'm only just trying to move to flakes now. I've had this process in place for years.
I do have some packages in overlay form, but the nixpks changes are things that should be upstreamed at some point. They mostly either have open PRs or aren't cleaned up enough to PR.
https://github.com/corngood/nixpkgs/commits/master
That's the actual branch where I merge in my changes.
Here's a random example of a change:
https://github.com/corngood/nixpkgs/commit/fc12baf28104d63fc163e9afe2aea24409522729
I find it much easier to maintain something like that as a patch, rather than an overlay (if that's even possible).
That makes sense
I use 23.05. Most Software in it is new enough for me. If I need something newer I just geht it from unstable.
I am using my own unstable nixpkgs, with nixmy (https://github.com/matejc/nixmy/blob/master/default.nix). Currently on 251 update of unstable channel :D I have it it my fork of nixpkgs: https://github.com/matejc/nixpkgs/tree/mylocal251
unstable all the way babyyyyyy
Unstable always. Very rarely the build breaks, but that just means I can't update my systems for a few days. Due to the atomic updates, my systems themselves have never broken.
Unstable on all my machines and servers