/ng/ NixOS General

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What is NixOS?
>NixOS is a GNU/Linux distro which improves the state of the art in system config management. In existing distros, actions such as upgrades are dangerous: upgrading a package can cause other packages to break, upgrading an entire system is less reliable than reinstalling from scratch, you can’t safely test what the results of a config change will be, you cannot easily undo changes, etc.
NixOS changes that

What features does NixOS have?
>Reliable & atomic upgrades
>Rollbacks
>Reproducible system configurations
>Safe to test changes
>Source-based model, with binaries
>Consistency [dependency upgrades also upgrade depending packages]
>Multi-user package management
>A unique configuration DSL

Read the NixOS manual
> nixos.org/nixos/manual/

Take your Nix pills
> nixos.org/nixos/nix-pills/

Check out the source code
> github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs
> github.com/NixOS/nix

I've been using NixOS for ~2 years. I'm happy to answer questions and provide insight.

> NixOS uses systemd!
If this is a deal breaker, you can still use Nix as a package manager on a different distro. NixOS is not coupled too tightly to systemd, but right now it would be a significant effort to put in a new init/service system. There're a number of us that intend make NixOS support other service managers eventually.

> Nix includes proprietary software!
Just as package managers like portage or pacman, there are proprietary packages available, but it's up to the user to use the packages. Nix was built to have things work without breaking, not to win FSF points

> Does Nix support X/Y/Z?
Probably. NixOS supports common configurations, and some esoteric configurations. If something isn't available and you don't want to write a package, flatpak is an option, and pacman is in nixpkgs, so you can get binary packages. There's also many customized Nix configurations online in which to find custom packages and configuration insight

Attached: nixos.png (512x512, 115K)

Other urls found in this thread:

nixos.org/nixos/manual/index.html#sec-installation
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

How does it differ from Guix?

I love Nix, but does it reaally need a general?

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>Guix is a fork of nix
>Nix can run non proprietary software
>Nix has way more packages
>Nix uses a language made for the sole reason of package management

(it (does (not have lisp))))

It has a DSL for configuration rather than using guile. The community is larger and more active. There are more available packages. It's also older and of course Guix was built on Nix mostly over philosophical differences (like the inclusion of non-libre software. Guix and Nix are symbiotic in a similar sense to Debian and Ubuntu.

If Haiku and OpenBSD have a general, then I'd say, yeah, it does, especially since it seems like more people here use it even though it's not really mainstream

how come most nix users are emcs users as well?

I use neovim myself and I know I'm not the only nix user to do so. I've tried switching to emacs but haven't found it worth the effort, I get work done with vim and I can't have it be disrupted too much (same reason I use nix -- I don't want my shit to break in the middle of a project)

{so = { it = just; has = [brackets, commas, and];}; semicolons = instead;}

wow such syntax

The biggest overlap with the Nix community is the Haskell community understandably, and the same kind of people interested in academic cs stuff are often Emacs people.

>(not (does (have it lisp)))
ftfy

baste

Except academia still prefers vim

is that true? I'm pretty removed from any sort of academia, but I'd imagine they'd prefer something extensible in a more "normal" manner such as emacs or even eclipse.

There are more academics using emacs than other populations, but that is still a small minority of academia. GUI shit is still king in Academia, then vim, then emacs, then nano.

here's an SS from my desktop. nothing seriously special. uptime was 50 days before I rebooted. I think I've gone something like 120 days on nixos and within that I was running full system upgrades automatically every night, this is on a desktop that's commonly used so I'd imagine I could easily have years of uptime on a server.

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Is there a retards guide to installing NixOS? I have never installed an OS that wasn't piss-easy like Fedora or Ubuntu.

Is there any reason to move from Arch to NixOS after having already config'd most everything to my liking? I haven't experienced proper breakage a single time since first installing it 3-something years ago so that's not a motivation for me at all.

>nothing to back your claims up
not that Idisagree per se, it's just... idk I feel like you're just talking out of your ass.

there is OP
nixos.org/nixos/manual/index.html#sec-installation
it requires some fiddling, like using the command line to install the OS, partition your disks yourself, mount them, etc. but the majority will be done by the `nixos-*` tools. I was surprised at how easy it was desu.

I'm thinking of adding a font to nixpkgs, but the license it uses isn't in the nixpkgs.meta.licenses list, what do?

Is guix welcome in this thread too?

Also, running proprietary things on guix isn't that hard? I'm mostly put of by the language used by nix.

See, I wish there was a more automated install with sensible defaults. I don't want to configure disks myself. I just want sane, reliable package management.

you can install nix, the package manager, on any linux distribution (and macOS)

y, nix the language is pretty shit, I think there is some project to have a statically typed nix-like as well as a dhall to nix compiler

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Add the license first or ripgrep through nixpkgs to see if anyone else is using it without sourcing from licenses

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Idk maybe if you use a lot of different computers and you want them all to be exactly the same, and perhaps maybe insurance for breakage. But you end up giving the AUR so whatever suites your needs

Why would anyone install NixOS then? What is the benefit?

you can manage your whole OS with nix, not just the packages you use. And it's all managed with a simple config file.

But I just want sane defaults and a painless install. Why bother with all that crap when a Fedora install requires essentially no interaction?

why bother with fedora when ubuntu exists
why bother with ubuntu when windows exists

Arch doesn't overwrite conf file that have been changed. The updated version is created alongside as a .pacnew file, the packagemanager notifies you that this has happened, and it's up to you to merge the two files.

Yeah, sure.

As far as running additional software on Guix. So far for me it just hasn't been worth it. Although Guile is "simple" the Guix guile code is not documented very well, and even Nix is not well-documented to begin with, so there are multiple layers of un-clarity that are happening. Personally I am interested in Guix but it can't even boot from LVM or run KDE out of the box, and when I looked I couldn't find a clear way to add these things. Nix is not extremely straight forward either but it at least supports more software without writing any code and the community is larger to help with issues or at least come across those issues and write about them online.

>What is NixOS?
>NixOS is a GNU/Linux distro
Filtered.