This is a mystery you don’t want to solve.
Nix (and more specifically, NixOS) made me switch to Linux as my daily driver.
I had been using Windows since 3.11 as my daily driver, MS DOS before that. This was for web browsing, gaming, and development. Linux was my sandbox on the side, and mostly server OS throughout the years.
Goes to show how powerful packagemanagers can be, it made me make the full switch after ~30 years. I love how my OS is now idempotent/declarative.
I have no idea what the actual reason is, I am just responding to the German language aspect.
In Dutch the word “niks” means nothing.
If Mr. Dolstra used a “nothing” reference, wouldn’t it make more sense that the Dutch person referenced the Dutch word “niks”, which is pronounced exactly the same way as Nix?
As far as conjecture goes this is far more plausible than a Dutch guy picking a German word “nichts” that resembles the pronunciation of the word/name Nix.
And for some reason Hollywood has engrained on society the notion that the Dutch natively speak German. Some of them learn it, but it is not their native language.
You just made me realize the Zoomers are actually much closer to making Warhammer 40k a reality. IT engineers are like Tech Priests to these Zoomers.
My own father was harsh, complicated, difficult to deal with.
I always thought I’d do the opposite.
What I learned later on was to ask my own children what their day was like, what excited them, how I could help them when they needed it most… and then you need to listen. Even if they’re asking silly things, things they have yet to learn, that’s how you find that connect.
And to some extent I try to balance the discipline by thinking, if I drop dead tomorrow, will I have prepared them as best as I could to become their own person? Will I have done it in a way that they’ll remember me fondly?
So far my kids have always said I am a great dad, all the same I ask myself if I could do better every day.
I think the question you started with here is the most important one though, how can you do great/better.
Oh it certainly wasn’t the first I have ever used.
Debian, Ubuntu, Kali, and more.
This is just the first one that has made me ‘want to make the shift’, so to speak.
I specialize professionally in hyper automation of all sorts of things. Long time user of PowerShell, custom built C++/C#/Java backend services. More recently also utilizing Python and Rust.
The declarative nature of NixOS (incl. Flakes, idempotent ❤️) is what I love about it. Although I am well aware it can be quite daunting for those that prefer imperative scripting, or even ClickOps.