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I've started to use nix (both nixos and nix installed on ubuntu) to manage those critical packages where I want both control and the option for major updates ou

I've started to use nix (both nixos and nix installed on ubuntu) to manage those critical packages where I want both control and the option for major updates outside the OS's release cadence.

narwally 6y ago
I tried nix on Ubuntu recently so that I could get an up-to-date, non-snap emacs (if you already think emacs is slow to load, you should see it as a snap), and the resulting build was giving me all kinds of issues, even with just the vanilla config. I tried one other package and had issues there as well. I ended up just compiling both from source and they worked perfectly. Is there anything special about getting nix working well with other package managers? I'll be honest, the main thing keeping me from digging into it further are the docs and the syntax. I can never tell if I'm reading about nix-the-package-manager, nix-the-language, or nix-the-operating-system; and looking at the syntax makes me understand what most programmers feel when they look at lisp.
- psanford 6y ago
  Yeah the syntax is intimidating. Its definitely one of those things where its easier to start off by copying examples and then slowly learn all the details. After using it for a while it mostly starts to feel like a slightly different JSON syntax (there are a few exceptions to this but you don't end up needing that for most of what you do). Sorry to hear you had issues on ubuntu. Its hard to say how you might improve your experience without knowing more details. The nix forum is probably a good place to get support for that sort of thing.
  - narwally 6y ago
    I'm sure I could track down the issue, I just didn't have the time. I was just hoping to use it to install a more up-to-date package here and there just to dip my toes in the water and go from there. I really like the idea behind it, and hope it or something similar catches on. I may just have to throw myself into the deep end and try NixOS out in a vm.
    - lightbulbjim 6y ago
      Yeah, you kinda have to drink the whole koolaid before it clicks. It’s great when it does though. It only clicked for me when I started using NixOS (on my primary laptop in my case) rather than just Nix.
gdm85 6y ago
How does it compare to using Ubuntu with Ansible? Do you ever miss being on mainline stable Ubuntu/Debian when using NixOS?
- psanford 6y ago
  On having your system be managed from configuration its sort of similar to Ansible. One major difference is with NixOS you can easily roll back to previous states of the system. That means both rolling back config changes and also rolling back package versions. That's something that Ansible doesn't really give you. NixOS also forces you to configure things the "right way" (e.g. you can't hand edit files in /etc). That is very good for reproducibility, but sometimes its frustrating when you just want to make things work quickly. I think the biggest challenge using NixOS vs Ubuntu is if you've got some weird obscure piece of software you need to get working there's a better chance that someone has already figured that out on Ubuntu and you might have to do the work to get it running on NixOS. On the other hand I've found contributing to Nix easier and less intimidating than contributing to Ubuntu. To add a package to Nix you just open a PR in the nixpkgs repo on github. I've found the community to be friendly and helpful. I use a lot of LXD containers for when I just want play around with something in a non Nix environment. Oh and I love being able to run `nix-shell -p <package>` to use a package without "installing" it.
- kevincox 6y ago
  NixOS is leauges above Ansible and similar. They are barely even playing the same game. The TL;DR is that Ansible is given a description for some part of the system, then squints at that part and trys to make it match the description. This means that it doesn't unify anything that you haven't described and if you stop describing something it doesn't go away (unless you explicitly tell Ansible to remove it). This means that your Ansible configs end up unintentionally depending on the state of the system and the state of your system depends on the Ansible configs you have applied in the past. NixOS is logically much more like building a fresh VM image every time you apply the configuration. Anything not in the configuration is effectively gone (it is still on the filesystem but the name is a cryptographic hash so no one can use it by accident). This makes the configs way more reproducible. It also means that I can apply a config to any system and end up with a functional replica that has no traces of the previous system. (other than mutable state which Nix doesn't really manage.) Nix has other advantages such as easy rollbacks (which is just a bit more convenient than checking out an old config and applying it manually) and the ability to have many versions of a library/config/package without conflicts or any special work required if you need that. I wrote a blog post a while ago that tries to go a bit more into detail over what I just described https://kevincox.ca/2015/12/13/nixos-managed-system/ https://kevincox.ca/2015/12/13/nixos-managed-system/

I've started to use nix (both nixos and nix installed on ubuntu) to manage those critical packages where I want both control and the option for major updates outside the OS's release cadence.

narwally 6y ago

I tried nix on Ubuntu recently so that I could get an up-to-date, non-snap emacs (if you already think emacs is slow to load, you should see it as a snap), and the resulting build was giving me all kinds of issues, even with just the vanilla config. I tried one other package and had issues there as well. I ended up just compiling both from source and they worked perfectly. Is there anything special about getting nix working well with other package managers? I'll be honest, the main thing keeping me from digging into it further are the docs and the syntax. I can never tell if I'm reading about nix-the-package-manager, nix-the-language, or nix-the-operating-system; and looking at the syntax makes me understand what most programmers feel when they look at lisp.

psanford 6y ago
Yeah the syntax is intimidating. Its definitely one of those things where its easier to start off by copying examples and then slowly learn all the details. After using it for a while it mostly starts to feel like a slightly different JSON syntax (there are a few exceptions to this but you don't end up needing that for most of what you do). Sorry to hear you had issues on ubuntu. Its hard to say how you might improve your experience without knowing more details. The nix forum is probably a good place to get support for that sort of thing.
- narwally 6y ago
  I'm sure I could track down the issue, I just didn't have the time. I was just hoping to use it to install a more up-to-date package here and there just to dip my toes in the water and go from there. I really like the idea behind it, and hope it or something similar catches on. I may just have to throw myself into the deep end and try NixOS out in a vm.
  - lightbulbjim 6y ago
    Yeah, you kinda have to drink the whole koolaid before it clicks. It’s great when it does though. It only clicked for me when I started using NixOS (on my primary laptop in my case) rather than just Nix.

gdm85 6y ago

How does it compare to using Ubuntu with Ansible? Do you ever miss being on mainline stable Ubuntu/Debian when using NixOS?

psanford 6y ago
On having your system be managed from configuration its sort of similar to Ansible. One major difference is with NixOS you can easily roll back to previous states of the system. That means both rolling back config changes and also rolling back package versions. That's something that Ansible doesn't really give you. NixOS also forces you to configure things the "right way" (e.g. you can't hand edit files in /etc). That is very good for reproducibility, but sometimes its frustrating when you just want to make things work quickly. I think the biggest challenge using NixOS vs Ubuntu is if you've got some weird obscure piece of software you need to get working there's a better chance that someone has already figured that out on Ubuntu and you might have to do the work to get it running on NixOS. On the other hand I've found contributing to Nix easier and less intimidating than contributing to Ubuntu. To add a package to Nix you just open a PR in the nixpkgs repo on github. I've found the community to be friendly and helpful. I use a lot of LXD containers for when I just want play around with something in a non Nix environment. Oh and I love being able to run `nix-shell -p <package>` to use a package without "installing" it.
kevincox 6y ago
NixOS is leauges above Ansible and similar. They are barely even playing the same game. The TL;DR is that Ansible is given a description for some part of the system, then squints at that part and trys to make it match the description. This means that it doesn't unify anything that you haven't described and if you stop describing something it doesn't go away (unless you explicitly tell Ansible to remove it). This means that your Ansible configs end up unintentionally depending on the state of the system and the state of your system depends on the Ansible configs you have applied in the past. NixOS is logically much more like building a fresh VM image every time you apply the configuration. Anything not in the configuration is effectively gone (it is still on the filesystem but the name is a cryptographic hash so no one can use it by accident). This makes the configs way more reproducible. It also means that I can apply a config to any system and end up with a functional replica that has no traces of the previous system. (other than mutable state which Nix doesn't really manage.) Nix has other advantages such as easy rollbacks (which is just a bit more convenient than checking out an old config and applying it manually) and the ability to have many versions of a library/config/package without conflicts or any special work required if you need that. I wrote a blog post a while ago that tries to go a bit more into detail over what I just described https://kevincox.ca/2015/12/13/nixos-managed-system/ https://kevincox.ca/2015/12/13/nixos-managed-system/