No. Its all text file config. You wouldn't use live CD mode. You define your own how you want it to work.
Its a steep learning curve so if looking for off the shelf solutions, don't use nix. If you need something custom but through a single config paradigm, nix is awesome.
Soap boxing here but I feel these kinds of use cases is what NixOS is built for.
Declarative config to setup the system, users, and apps.
Declarative and customizable impermanence exactly how you want it.
I use Tails as well but NixOS is my daily driver. Anything not marked explicitly to persist is dropped each reboot. I'm the only user so I keep the last 30 days of non persisted data for like a power outage but that's something I had to go out of my to setup for my use case.
1000% this. I'm now rediscovering my rather fluid gender identity and attraction to both genders that started in my late 30s. Looking back, all the signs were there, I just kept things private as it wasn't socially acceptable. Had some outlet with the teen goth scene, which was nonexistent in college. Grew up in a heavily catholic influenced region.
Have an awesome wife who is supportive and revealed she is (now was) also closet bi from the same generation.
We moved away from there, but when I visit family all the churches are run down and closed. I smile every time knowing their grip is loosening. All the LGBT hate today just tastes like desperation.
There is anonymity and pseudonymity.
Do you need your opsec to be resistant to state-level actors (oppressive regime, censorship, illegal activities)? Well then you need to make sure you don't introduce anything that will deanonomize you.
Are you trying to be resistant to mass data collection efforts used for profit? Being on the pseudonymity spectrum is a good step.
Dealing with the latter is like dealing with a bully. Make it not worth their time. They just want to put you in bucket X so they can estimate the most likely way to influence you for reason Y. Pseudonymity is about having multiple aliases that get put into different buckets so their privacy invasive efforts are less effective.
I'm both experienced and know jack shit because there is just too much to learn. I just started using it (1998ish) to make cool looking UIs. Its been my daily driver for 15 years now.
You will never learn it all. Over time you may become more familiar with the terminal or you may not. Doesn't matter. You do you.
Its pretty easy to test drive. Grab a distros "Live CD" version, put in on a thumb drive, reboot and play around. This wont be persistent. When you're ready, install it on an external SSD. Play around some more now that your edits will be persistent. You'll mess up. Take notes. Start again once you've hosed your system.
There are libraries that do just this like https://effect.website/docs/guides/schema/introduction.
Appreciate the write up though! All too easy to rely on libraries without understanding what's under the hood.
Thanks for sharing, it was a good read.
This is why we trust but verify. Thanks mom for teaching me that cruel lesson of unplugging the phone cord to get me to bed (dial up days). It lasted about a week before I caught on you always came up from the basement before bed.
I'm so glad you never noticed I swapped my line with the guest bedroom. Also glad that ancient block in the basement could be hand wired.
The original used XI where it was 9 or 11 depending on the side.
edit: Nope I was wrong. That post links this one, lol.
For our lower environments we use rsync like the author but skip the pipeline altogether. The servers have a watch script to restart when files are rsynced. We then have a local watch script that rsyncs on file changes.
Relatively instant deploy (2-5s) whenever a file is saved.
Sounds like one of my 10 alarms, all with different tones, to make sure I wake up. This one is Krypton on Android.
Good call on a simulated failure. When I first set it up, it was LVM/BTRFS or ZFS as my top choices. It was a coin toss at the time because I hadn't built this sort of setup before.
Less public / archived spaces as well. Videogame lobbies were rampant with Trump / MAGA messaging in 2019. Not sure what its like now as I quit all online gaming. Anyone 14-17 during that period who are now of voting age has likely gotten a massive dose of right wing propaganda.