7 ms·

NixOS Linux

229 points by lemonspat 6y ago

0xCMP 6y ago
If you want to get in to Nix I think two important things to note: 1. Nix is not a "package manager" and I think it's better at first to not think of it as one because you'll assume how it works incorrectly. It is a package manager, but it doesn't have the same workflow as yarn or etc. That trips a lot of people up. 2. You need to read the Nix Pills documentation. It is not long and guides you through every abstraction so you understand from the basics how it works. Nix is actually pretty self descriptive. I setup my home's Linux Router entirely by just hacking and searching through the nixpkgs repo without understanding things, but if I'd read the Nix Pills things would have been so much clearer to me. Especially when debugging or reading through what a derivation was doing.
pachico 6y ago
Just to see if I understand, does this mean you might end up having dozens of libcurls?
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Is that any different that Docker?
  - choward 6y ago
    It's better actually since you can share some libraries when possible.
  - axelf4 6y ago
    Nix derivations are also lighter than containers. Just ordinary packages.
- choward 6y ago
  If any of software relies on different versions, yes. It beats not being able to use something because you can only have one version of a library shared.
  - pachico 6y ago
    I understand, thanks. It wasn't a criticism, I honestly asked out of ignorance.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
    How does this work with compiling software. For example, I routinely compile programs that use different versions of openssl. Does NixOS make this process any easier.
    - rowanG077 6y ago
      Yes that's one of the greatest things about nix. You can have 100 pieces of software installed that all use a different curl version without issues. You can also develop 100 piece of software/compile that all use a different curl version at once.
    - mcint 6y ago
      This is the killer use case, and the initial primary(?) design justification. https://nixos.org/guides/how-nix-works.html https://nixos.org/guides/how-nix-works.html https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/nixos-icfp2008-final.pdf https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/nixos-icfp2008-final.pdf
- ReactiveJelly 6y ago
  As an optional fun fact, from my Arch system: - libcurl is 615,616 bytes - curl itself is another 192,480 bytes Not counting man pages.
- MetaDark 6y ago
  It could, depending on your use case, but normally all packages from nixpkgs share the same libcurl, so when libcurl is updated, all packages that depend on it will also be updated. The old libcurl will still exist on your system to allow you to rollback to previous states of your system, but you can always run nix-collect-garbage if you want to free up disk space. This is similar to the situation in Arch Linux where pacman keeps all downloaded packages, and you have to run paccache if you want to free space.
- ertian 6y ago
  Yeah, you potentially could. Generally you don't specify a specific version as a dependency unless it's necessary, but when 'building' the system, specific versions are used. If things break during an upgrade you can roll back to the previous version. Keeping those older builds around will mean keeping older versions of the packages used in those builds (libcurl, for example). Periodically, you can purge older generations (i.e. builds) and collect garbage, which will clear out packages that aren't used anymore. It would be very strange to end up in a situation where you had dozens of instances of libcurl _being used simultaneously_ (though I guess that would be possible if lots of packages had very special requirements, and ended up building libcurl with different flags or something). There may be circumstances where you have a _specific_ version dependency, and you can specify that too. That would mean having multiple copies of the same package, even in a single generation. Obviously this usually means major versions, so you don't usually see _dozens_ of them. Having specific dependencies on minor versions would be a major code smell IMHO. Anecdotally, my NixOS systems (both desktops and servers) can grow up to, say, ~50 gb of system files in a few months, at which point I'll clear out older generations and GC, which gets them down closer to a typical Linux distro size. Once or twice, I've seen a system balloon up over 100G when I was doing a lot of experimenting with packages. Oh, and incidentally, most of the different versions are only visible to the packages that depend on them. Your 'default' environment is one such package, and only sees one of each of it's dependencies. It's not like you have dozens of instances of packages crowding /lib or anything (since /lib doesn't exist in the first place). You have to go looking in the Nix package store to find the actual files.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  You could or you couldn't. It's your choice: - Traditional distro: you cannot end up with that - Flatpack, snap etc.: you cannot avoid that Nixpkgs doesn't wontonly package multiple versions of libraries. But as you upgrade you will accumulate old builds of libraries until you GC. The meaningful question is not how many of X do you have installed, but whether you have multiple versions of X reachable from GC roots.
- kaba0 6y ago
  Not repeating the others: If a package does end up using multiple version of the same lib, nixos can even deduplicate it somewhat, by symlinking one’s documentations to the other’s.
  - smilliken 6y ago
    There's an optimzation I'm aware of where nix will de-duplicate individual files with hard links. This wouldn't be safe in almost any other context, but is safe with nix because the files are immutable. So you have have 100 variations of libcurl and only "pay" for the unique files.
fooblat 6y ago
I've been using linux based operating systems for 20+ years and I decided to give NixOS a try recently. I had read the install was "difficult" but I found it very straightforward. The configuration system very easy to understand and work with. I think this is actually the perfect distro for a "one off" home server because configuration management is built in so it is easy to rebuild my server from the backup of a single file.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  The install is "difficult" in the sense that there is no wizard-style installer like many other distros have. You can install e.g. Ubuntu or Mint without knowing what a disk partition is. You need to have at least some vague idea of what a disk partition is to install NixOS. It's much easier than most manually-configured installs (e.g. gentoo) though, because pretty much everything other than partitioning the disks has a default, so you need to make fewer decisions at install time.
indemnity 6y ago
I tried to use nixOS as a desktop system. Using a special command (nix-shell) whenever I needed to do development things (e.g. Rust builds) was not my idea of fun. Some other things, like overriding GDM's monitors.xml file, were pretty much impossible to do. Maybe it's better if you just use it as a base for servers / containers.
- techdragon 6y ago
  Has the container situation improved? Last time I looked (quite some time ago) I couldn’t find an official or community blessed container to base anything on.
  - mcint 6y ago
    Nix supports containers as a build target or output format, but the nix tools are considerate (easy to uninstall) so there's no need (& little sense) in putting them in a container. You could run the nix install script in a ubuntu or alpine image. I use Nix on macOS, wishing I could replace all my brew usage with it. Working on a home-manager derived setup. The dev workflow mentioned by tikhonj https://christine.website/blog/how-i-start-nix-2020-03-08 https://christine.website/blog/how-i-start-nix-2020-03-08 (including a "derivation" building a container from the example project). https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/ https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/
  - tikhonj 6y ago
    I've used the nixos/nix image from Docker Hub[1] to run some CI scripts using Nix to build my projects. As far as I understand it, it's basically Alpine Linux with the Nix package manager and tools preinstalled, but it worked pretty well for me. [1]: https://hub.docker.com/r/nixos/nix/ https://hub.docker.com/r/nixos/nix/
    - techdragon 6y ago
      This is the sort of thing I was looking for. There may not be much too it, (and as another comment mentioned, the package management tools can output containers) but having a blessed starting point shows a clear signal to potential user that it's not just an afterthought.
setheron 6y ago
The big idea in Nix is the view that the filesystem is like mutable memory in a programming language. You wouldn't give access to memory raw without any safeguards. (Typical package managers can just arbitrarily dump files or remove files) It takes a structured approach. Laying over a graph database on top of your filesystem which is read-only typically. This helps provide guarantees and also every application has its own hermetic sealed dependency closure. Nix is truly revolutionary and it's getting steady adoption. Give it a read if you don't know about it. You can adopt it on any Linux distro without using the full NixOS. I write a lot about it on my blog.
- pmarreck 6y ago
  I love the guarantees given by Nix (I'm an immutable/functional-lang dev, Elixir specifically, so I really do get that), and I get that introducing a certain amount of complexity is sort of unavoidable when going in this direction (similarly, functional languages have a learning curve), but Nix for some reason still isn't clicking for me- I don't know if its UI is just terrible, its learning curve too steep, or something... but it's the sort of thing you can't just dabble in, you have to commit 200% to... and I think that's asking a lot of people. To use the cost/benefit analogy of functional languages, it feels like Nix has a much steeper cost to get the (admittedly unique) benefit of a completely deterministic software stack.
- higerordermap 6y ago
  I find android way much simpler. On android every app has its own data and app directories, and you can uninstall, clear data or clear cache of apps safely. I know this method doesn't work out of the box with traditional desktop software that assumes a Unix like filesystem hierarchy. But Nix doesn't work out-of-the-box as well. I would be interested to know what other advantages Nix / GUIX bring in practical terms.
  - adev_ 6y ago
    Nix is far more than just an app with its own directory (Which is also the flatpack & snap approach): A little not exhaustive list of features that Nix provides: - Not only an 'app installer'. It is a fully feature functional build system where reproducible builds are guaranteed (This is unique with GUIX up to my knowledge) on any linux distribution. Safe-reliable distributed builds are also possible. - Fine grain de-duplication of dependencies (libraries, frameworks) to save disk space - Safe, unprivileged installation of binaries in a multi-user environment on a single machine. - Atomic upgrade and rollback - Allow multiple variations of the same package with different options & versions installed in parallel without any risk of conflict - Solves definitively all ABI breaks problem you encounter on traditional package manager, even with shared library.
nincompoo 6y ago
I use Void now and like not having systemd. Can I install Nix on my Void? Do I then just stop using the native package manager? Or would it be better to install NixOS? Could I then choose not to use systemd? Would that be hard? Is the idea that you can define your system in a file and reproduce it more or less automatically? How does this compare to Guix?
- whateveracct 6y ago
  NixOS uses systemd pretty heavily under the hood. You configure systemd services in the Nix language as part of your system config. It's quite nice.
  - ertian 6y ago
    Yeah, configuring systemd with Nix changed it from annoyance to a pleasure for me. Instead of fiddling with a bunch of random .service files, you can just do everything in a nix config and have them generated for you. Complex systems involving a bunch of units (services, timers, paths, whatever) can all be in one single place--alongside the service config. You can easily share defaults between units. It's so much nicer than doing it ad-hoc.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  > Can I install Nix on my Void? Yes. (And you won't need to use systemd with just Nix and Nixpkgs) > Do I then just stop using the native package manager? No > Is the idea that you can define your system in a file and reproduce it more or less automatically? Yes > How does this compare to Guix? Very similar. Guix is a fork -> rewrite, with more Scheme and more FSF policy. But core concepts have not diverged.
- ertian 6y ago
  You should probably be able to run Nix on Void. It might get awkward running two parallel package managers, but I've heard good things. The idea of Nix is that you can specify a package's dependencies very explicitly, and have it build in a hermetic, and reproducible, environment. It can handle all sorts of dependencies, be they same-language libraries, binaries, or native system libraries. You can think of it sort of like firing up a docker container in which to run your build--if it works once, it'll always work, and if it works here it should work everywhere. NixOS adds to that by essentially making the running system one of the packages managed by Nix. You specify what packages should be installed, how those packages should be configured, what services should be run, users that should exist, etc. When you build, the operating system you're running on is replaced with the new one. If anything breaks, you can trivially roll back. If you build the same config on a different host, you'll end up with the same system (albeit with slightly different package versions). Guix is basically a fork of Nix (or started that way); it's got a very similar approach to Nix (and GuixSD to NixOS). It uses Gnu Shepherd instead of systemd, and uses Scheme for system config instead of a custom language.
jackinloadup 6y ago
Can anyone talk to if nixos can reasonably be used to run a desktop setup?
- jeppesen-io 6y ago
  I started using it as desktop os two weeks ago. I've been quite happy with it. Fast and snappy gnome desktop. Took half a day to install and get comfortable Then anouther half day to get comfortable with home-manager to configure my user settings If you're willing, its worth the effort
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
  As long as what you want to do is already in nixpks it's extremely easy, once you stray from that you need to start learning how all of it works, it's not the best in terms of documentation & straight forward concepts, but I've been running it at my main desktop for 6 months now. Sometimes it shines ex: I messed up my x11 config as well as drivers and just booted into the previous generation like it was no big deal I needed to install a version of electrum that was only available on a specific git commit. I just specified the commit and booted into a shell with it Sometimes it sucks: Learning to package arrive 3rd party software can sometimes be really complicated and it might be the only way forward. Lots of steam doesn't work out of the box compared to Ubuntu.
  - ertian 6y ago
    Second this. It's mostly been a pleasure, but Steam is a mess. And I just gave up on Android development on NixOS; I used a Ubuntu VM for that. But starting off with a new computer, copying over a config file from one of your existing files, building...and ending up with _exactly the same system_, including all those tweaks to _this_ file and _that_ config, and the cronjobs you've set up over time, and all your different rc files, is magical.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      Steam works fine for me. Also, the "NVidia prime" stuff from https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nvidia https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nvidia works out of the box since 20.09. (Though i will be happy when Dell finally sells AMD graphics instead.) Also I've made android packages (albiet ones that don't use much Java) using the Nixpkgs repackaging of the Android SDK.
jeppesen-io 6y ago
Related - I've been using home-manager on MacOS, WSL2 and NixOS. Very nice to have a single, small file to manage my dot configs and CLI tools on various platforms
deleted 6y ago
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chaorace 6y ago
I played with NixOS and am willing to admit that it was too difficult. It's probably great for devops, but it's just slightly too rigid for my own personal use. Let me give an example: let's say you want to use xmonad on top of Plasma. NixOS doesn't have any simple way to configure that. You have the mutually exclusive options for one or the other, basically. I know Nix is powerful enough to do this, if I wanted to go offroad and create custom packages/derivations, but that's the point where I am no longer happy with the utility/work tradeoff. It's what ultimately sent me packing back over to arch. When I came back to arch, I was left hankering for NixOS's declarative package management, if that could be somehow reconciled with the baseline arch package system. This led me to using the aconfmgr utility, which checks in packages and system configuration files into a home-based filetree. Once you've got it set up, aconfmgr can regenerate your current configuration from scratch, declaratively! I was able to check the aconfmgr tree into my dotfiles repo, so now it tracks my home state AND my system state. Unlike Nix, this still uses file-based configuration, but it's all versioned and fully reproducible, so I no longer particularly care about that caveat.
- camehere3saydis 6y ago
  > Let's say you want to use xmonad on top of Plasma. NixOS doesn't have any simple way to configure that. You have the mutually exclusive options for one or the other, basically. I was pleasantly surprised to find the contrary to be true: in my experience, NixOS is the only distro to give you _every_ DE+WM combination pre-generated as a login session that you can pick from the display manager.
  - tetris11 6y ago
    Still waiting on LDM...
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  > xmonad on top of Plasma I gave up on XMonad + Gnome before I switched from Ubuntu to NixOS 6-7 years ago. Does XMonad + KDE work? I would love to get such combos working in NixOS / home-manager. (We also need to bite the bullet and get X-less Wayland working properly. I think I might be tempted to plan everything out at once so we don't get conflicting refactors or too much complexity.)
dang 6y ago
Too many previous threads to list, but here are a bunch: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E10%20nixos&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... The current thread seems pretty good so far, though, so we'll leave it.
haolez 6y ago
Kind of off topic, but I would love to have NixOps (https://github.com/NixOS/nixops https://github.com/NixOS/nixops) as an abstraction layer for every type of cloud service, and not just virtual machines (e.g. queues, object storages, etc). There is Terraform and Ansible, of course, but Nix seems like it could combine the strengths of both of them.
- RaitoBezarius 6y ago
  There are actual plugins for AWS, Hetzner, GCP and Azure (on an old version of NixOps) and it's quite easy to add support for your favorite cloud if there is a decent usable API.
tbenst 6y ago
Before installing NixOS, I’d recommend anyone on Linux to give home-manager a go first for the userspace declarative approach with Nix. After a year with full-time NixOS, I switched back to Ubuntu + home-manager as best of both worlds—declarative when feasible, imperative when convenient. [1] https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager
- crvdgc 6y ago
  I had the same experience as well. I tried NixOS once as my main desktop environment. I encountered two problems that made me switch to Ubuntu+Nix. And they work perfectly for their own purposes. One problem is dynamically linked binaries, where the library points to a global position (like /usr/lib). In NixOS, different builds can depend on different versions of the same binary, so there is no single global location. This is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. And normal cases can be fixed with the patchelf [^1] utility. I couldn't make it work with a Z3 binary, so I finally gave up. The other problem is when I tried to configure jackdbus. There's only one example [^2] configuration. It is marked as outdated by the wiki, and indeed none of the settings work for me. Then I realized these two are not problems that Nix tries to solve. Pointing to a global binary is okay for some quick fixes. And JACK module is better to work out-of-the-box, I don't want to dive into all of the configurations before I haven't even used it. Now I use Ubuntu for casual desktop applications and write Nix derivations for projects that need reproducibility. And I think I find my perfect balance. [^1]: https://github.com/NixOS/patchelf https://github.com/NixOS/patchelf [^2]: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/JACK https://nixos.wiki/wiki/JACK
amelius 6y ago
I'd love to try Nix. But, I'm using an Nvidia Jetson environment, which is based on a preinstalled Ubuntu 18.04, probably with lots of specific driver configurations that I don't want to touch (or reinvent). I've also learned that running Nix on top of Ubuntu is not the greatest idea, see e.g. [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16443323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16443323
- mst 6y ago
  A mildly insane possibility would be to install lxc and then use a system container to play with nix in.
nvarsj 6y ago
NixOS and the nix package manager are revolutionary OS tools, hampered by a convoluted, undocumented language and library (itself called Nix). Despite this, I think it's totally worth going through the pain of learning Nix to use NixOS. There is nothing else like it. I imagine other OS's will try to copy and borrow the ideas, in fact they are already doing this (see all the half baked immutable OS stuff out there...), but nothing is as good as NixOS at the moment. Note: A notable exception is GNU Guix, which is another excellent OS/package manager that is very similar to Nix, with the far more approachable Guile (scheme based). Unfortunately the ecosystem is just not large enough to be usable for practical purposes - also it's hampered by the usual aversion to non-free software.
agumonkey 6y ago
I wonder if it's leaking into other distros. Just like proglangs got destructuring and lambdas gradually.. maybe OSes are influenced by nix.
- nvarsj 6y ago
  Oh definitely. The whole concept of immutable OS management - this stuff all comes from NixOS's influence. You see it in Silverblue for example, and other mainstream distros. They are a pale imitation but the influence is there.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    There's also the reproducible build effort, which is somehow more parallel to nix, or cross pollinating than influenced.. but same spirit (and great work by lunar and his friends)
dchasson 6y ago
I enjoyed learning the difference between NixOS, nix (eg, nix-build, nix-env,...) Nix Language, and nixpkgs. Knowing the difference of tools in the belt is like knowing the blades themselves. You can always make your own tools. If I can't package something with nix, then I call it "metal"
EE84M3i 6y ago
The last time I looked into Nix (a few years back) the expression language was very under documented which made it very difficult to use (e.g. searching for lots of examples to copy paste, instead of working from first principles). Has this gotten better?
tomberek 6y ago
Nix is a powerful package manager. I can confidently compile and run multiple incompatible versions of software simultaneously. I can build projects from years ago. I can package large projects from different ecosystems (python 2/3, c/c++, go, Javascript, Octave, Rust) and be confident they will not interfere with each other. I can try bleeding edge software with no risk to it interfering with my system. It is faster and less hassle than juggling various Docker containers and VMs. It protects me from dependency hell. Using Nix to manage an operating system (ie: NixOS) then gives me those benefits for my entire machine. Then I get even more benefits when using Nix on any other (not even necessarily NixOS) machine by pushing around package closures and managing a simple binary cache. But overall: it makes me more productive. It is my secret weapon to manage the complexity of software development.
aporetics 6y ago
I read most of the comments up to this point and was surprised that no one has mentioned how the system config is versioned, and the boot loader allows you to select from past builds, making it incredibly easy to recover from config issues (and thus also easy to experiment with different configs without fear of having to waste hours recovering a certain state).
SkyMarshal 6y ago
I didn't realize how far along NixOS's package repo had come, but apparently it's in the top 3 now, according to this site linked from their news page: https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/total https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/total https://nixos.org/news.html https://nixos.org/news.html

229 points by lemonspat 6y ago

If you want to get in to Nix I think two important things to note: 1. Nix is not a "package manager" and I think it's better at first to not think of it as one because you'll assume how it works incorrectly. It is a package manager, but it doesn't have the same workflow as yarn or etc. That trips a lot of people up. 2. You need to read the Nix Pills documentation. It is not long and guides you through every abstraction so you understand from the basics how it works. Nix is actually pretty self descriptive. I setup my home's Linux Router entirely by just hacking and searching through the nixpkgs repo without understanding things, but if I'd read the Nix Pills things would have been so much clearer to me. Especially when debugging or reading through what a derivation was doing.

pachico 6y ago

Just to see if I understand, does this mean you might end up having dozens of libcurls?

colejohnson66 6y ago
Is that any different that Docker?
- choward 6y ago
  It's better actually since you can share some libraries when possible.
- axelf4 6y ago
  Nix derivations are also lighter than containers. Just ordinary packages.
choward 6y ago
If any of software relies on different versions, yes. It beats not being able to use something because you can only have one version of a library shared.
- pachico 6y ago
  I understand, thanks. It wasn't a criticism, I honestly asked out of ignorance.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  How does this work with compiling software. For example, I routinely compile programs that use different versions of openssl. Does NixOS make this process any easier.
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    Yes that's one of the greatest things about nix. You can have 100 pieces of software installed that all use a different curl version without issues. You can also develop 100 piece of software/compile that all use a different curl version at once.
  - mcint 6y ago
    This is the killer use case, and the initial primary(?) design justification. https://nixos.org/guides/how-nix-works.html https://nixos.org/guides/how-nix-works.html https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/nixos-icfp2008-final.pdf https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/nixos-icfp2008-final.pdf
ReactiveJelly 6y ago
As an optional fun fact, from my Arch system: - libcurl is 615,616 bytes - curl itself is another 192,480 bytes Not counting man pages.
MetaDark 6y ago
It could, depending on your use case, but normally all packages from nixpkgs share the same libcurl, so when libcurl is updated, all packages that depend on it will also be updated. The old libcurl will still exist on your system to allow you to rollback to previous states of your system, but you can always run nix-collect-garbage if you want to free up disk space. This is similar to the situation in Arch Linux where pacman keeps all downloaded packages, and you have to run paccache if you want to free space.
ertian 6y ago
Yeah, you potentially could. Generally you don't specify a specific version as a dependency unless it's necessary, but when 'building' the system, specific versions are used. If things break during an upgrade you can roll back to the previous version. Keeping those older builds around will mean keeping older versions of the packages used in those builds (libcurl, for example). Periodically, you can purge older generations (i.e. builds) and collect garbage, which will clear out packages that aren't used anymore. It would be very strange to end up in a situation where you had dozens of instances of libcurl _being used simultaneously_ (though I guess that would be possible if lots of packages had very special requirements, and ended up building libcurl with different flags or something). There may be circumstances where you have a _specific_ version dependency, and you can specify that too. That would mean having multiple copies of the same package, even in a single generation. Obviously this usually means major versions, so you don't usually see _dozens_ of them. Having specific dependencies on minor versions would be a major code smell IMHO. Anecdotally, my NixOS systems (both desktops and servers) can grow up to, say, ~50 gb of system files in a few months, at which point I'll clear out older generations and GC, which gets them down closer to a typical Linux distro size. Once or twice, I've seen a system balloon up over 100G when I was doing a lot of experimenting with packages. Oh, and incidentally, most of the different versions are only visible to the packages that depend on them. Your 'default' environment is one such package, and only sees one of each of it's dependencies. It's not like you have dozens of instances of packages crowding /lib or anything (since /lib doesn't exist in the first place). You have to go looking in the Nix package store to find the actual files.
Ericson2314 6y ago
You could or you couldn't. It's your choice: - Traditional distro: you cannot end up with that - Flatpack, snap etc.: you cannot avoid that Nixpkgs doesn't wontonly package multiple versions of libraries. But as you upgrade you will accumulate old builds of libraries until you GC. The meaningful question is not how many of X do you have installed, but whether you have multiple versions of X reachable from GC roots.
kaba0 6y ago
Not repeating the others: If a package does end up using multiple version of the same lib, nixos can even deduplicate it somewhat, by symlinking one’s documentations to the other’s.
- smilliken 6y ago
  There's an optimzation I'm aware of where nix will de-duplicate individual files with hard links. This wouldn't be safe in almost any other context, but is safe with nix because the files are immutable. So you have have 100 variations of libcurl and only "pay" for the unique files.

fooblat 6y ago

I've been using linux based operating systems for 20+ years and I decided to give NixOS a try recently. I had read the install was "difficult" but I found it very straightforward. The configuration system very easy to understand and work with. I think this is actually the perfect distro for a "one off" home server because configuration management is built in so it is easy to rebuild my server from the backup of a single file.

aidenn0 6y ago
The install is "difficult" in the sense that there is no wizard-style installer like many other distros have. You can install e.g. Ubuntu or Mint without knowing what a disk partition is. You need to have at least some vague idea of what a disk partition is to install NixOS. It's much easier than most manually-configured installs (e.g. gentoo) though, because pretty much everything other than partitioning the disks has a default, so you need to make fewer decisions at install time.

indemnity 6y ago

I tried to use nixOS as a desktop system. Using a special command (nix-shell) whenever I needed to do development things (e.g. Rust builds) was not my idea of fun. Some other things, like overriding GDM's monitors.xml file, were pretty much impossible to do. Maybe it's better if you just use it as a base for servers / containers.

techdragon 6y ago
Has the container situation improved? Last time I looked (quite some time ago) I couldn’t find an official or community blessed container to base anything on.
- mcint 6y ago
  Nix supports containers as a build target or output format, but the nix tools are considerate (easy to uninstall) so there's no need (& little sense) in putting them in a container. You could run the nix install script in a ubuntu or alpine image. I use Nix on macOS, wishing I could replace all my brew usage with it. Working on a home-manager derived setup. The dev workflow mentioned by tikhonj https://christine.website/blog/how-i-start-nix-2020-03-08 https://christine.website/blog/how-i-start-nix-2020-03-08 (including a "derivation" building a container from the example project). https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/ https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/
- tikhonj 6y ago
  I've used the nixos/nix image from Docker Hub[1] to run some CI scripts using Nix to build my projects. As far as I understand it, it's basically Alpine Linux with the Nix package manager and tools preinstalled, but it worked pretty well for me. [1]: https://hub.docker.com/r/nixos/nix/ https://hub.docker.com/r/nixos/nix/
  - techdragon 6y ago
    This is the sort of thing I was looking for. There may not be much too it, (and as another comment mentioned, the package management tools can output containers) but having a blessed starting point shows a clear signal to potential user that it's not just an afterthought.

setheron 6y ago

The big idea in Nix is the view that the filesystem is like mutable memory in a programming language. You wouldn't give access to memory raw without any safeguards. (Typical package managers can just arbitrarily dump files or remove files) It takes a structured approach. Laying over a graph database on top of your filesystem which is read-only typically. This helps provide guarantees and also every application has its own hermetic sealed dependency closure. Nix is truly revolutionary and it's getting steady adoption. Give it a read if you don't know about it. You can adopt it on any Linux distro without using the full NixOS. I write a lot about it on my blog.

pmarreck 6y ago
I love the guarantees given by Nix (I'm an immutable/functional-lang dev, Elixir specifically, so I really do get that), and I get that introducing a certain amount of complexity is sort of unavoidable when going in this direction (similarly, functional languages have a learning curve), but Nix for some reason still isn't clicking for me- I don't know if its UI is just terrible, its learning curve too steep, or something... but it's the sort of thing you can't just dabble in, you have to commit 200% to... and I think that's asking a lot of people. To use the cost/benefit analogy of functional languages, it feels like Nix has a much steeper cost to get the (admittedly unique) benefit of a completely deterministic software stack.
higerordermap 6y ago
I find android way much simpler. On android every app has its own data and app directories, and you can uninstall, clear data or clear cache of apps safely. I know this method doesn't work out of the box with traditional desktop software that assumes a Unix like filesystem hierarchy. But Nix doesn't work out-of-the-box as well. I would be interested to know what other advantages Nix / GUIX bring in practical terms.
- adev_ 6y ago
  Nix is far more than just an app with its own directory (Which is also the flatpack & snap approach): A little not exhaustive list of features that Nix provides: - Not only an 'app installer'. It is a fully feature functional build system where reproducible builds are guaranteed (This is unique with GUIX up to my knowledge) on any linux distribution. Safe-reliable distributed builds are also possible. - Fine grain de-duplication of dependencies (libraries, frameworks) to save disk space - Safe, unprivileged installation of binaries in a multi-user environment on a single machine. - Atomic upgrade and rollback - Allow multiple variations of the same package with different options & versions installed in parallel without any risk of conflict - Solves definitively all ABI breaks problem you encounter on traditional package manager, even with shared library.

nincompoo 6y ago

I use Void now and like not having systemd. Can I install Nix on my Void? Do I then just stop using the native package manager? Or would it be better to install NixOS? Could I then choose not to use systemd? Would that be hard? Is the idea that you can define your system in a file and reproduce it more or less automatically? How does this compare to Guix?

whateveracct 6y ago
NixOS uses systemd pretty heavily under the hood. You configure systemd services in the Nix language as part of your system config. It's quite nice.
- ertian 6y ago
  Yeah, configuring systemd with Nix changed it from annoyance to a pleasure for me. Instead of fiddling with a bunch of random .service files, you can just do everything in a nix config and have them generated for you. Complex systems involving a bunch of units (services, timers, paths, whatever) can all be in one single place--alongside the service config. You can easily share defaults between units. It's so much nicer than doing it ad-hoc.
Ericson2314 6y ago
> Can I install Nix on my Void? Yes. (And you won't need to use systemd with just Nix and Nixpkgs) > Do I then just stop using the native package manager? No > Is the idea that you can define your system in a file and reproduce it more or less automatically? Yes > How does this compare to Guix? Very similar. Guix is a fork -> rewrite, with more Scheme and more FSF policy. But core concepts have not diverged.
ertian 6y ago
You should probably be able to run Nix on Void. It might get awkward running two parallel package managers, but I've heard good things. The idea of Nix is that you can specify a package's dependencies very explicitly, and have it build in a hermetic, and reproducible, environment. It can handle all sorts of dependencies, be they same-language libraries, binaries, or native system libraries. You can think of it sort of like firing up a docker container in which to run your build--if it works once, it'll always work, and if it works here it should work everywhere. NixOS adds to that by essentially making the running system one of the packages managed by Nix. You specify what packages should be installed, how those packages should be configured, what services should be run, users that should exist, etc. When you build, the operating system you're running on is replaced with the new one. If anything breaks, you can trivially roll back. If you build the same config on a different host, you'll end up with the same system (albeit with slightly different package versions). Guix is basically a fork of Nix (or started that way); it's got a very similar approach to Nix (and GuixSD to NixOS). It uses Gnu Shepherd instead of systemd, and uses Scheme for system config instead of a custom language.

jackinloadup 6y ago

Can anyone talk to if nixos can reasonably be used to run a desktop setup?

jeppesen-io 6y ago
I started using it as desktop os two weeks ago. I've been quite happy with it. Fast and snappy gnome desktop. Took half a day to install and get comfortable Then anouther half day to get comfortable with home-manager to configure my user settings If you're willing, its worth the effort
X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
As long as what you want to do is already in nixpks it's extremely easy, once you stray from that you need to start learning how all of it works, it's not the best in terms of documentation & straight forward concepts, but I've been running it at my main desktop for 6 months now. Sometimes it shines ex: I messed up my x11 config as well as drivers and just booted into the previous generation like it was no big deal I needed to install a version of electrum that was only available on a specific git commit. I just specified the commit and booted into a shell with it Sometimes it sucks: Learning to package arrive 3rd party software can sometimes be really complicated and it might be the only way forward. Lots of steam doesn't work out of the box compared to Ubuntu.
- ertian 6y ago
  Second this. It's mostly been a pleasure, but Steam is a mess. And I just gave up on Android development on NixOS; I used a Ubuntu VM for that. But starting off with a new computer, copying over a config file from one of your existing files, building...and ending up with _exactly the same system_, including all those tweaks to _this_ file and _that_ config, and the cronjobs you've set up over time, and all your different rc files, is magical.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    Steam works fine for me. Also, the "NVidia prime" stuff from https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nvidia https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nvidia works out of the box since 20.09. (Though i will be happy when Dell finally sells AMD graphics instead.) Also I've made android packages (albiet ones that don't use much Java) using the Nixpkgs repackaging of the Android SDK.

jeppesen-io 6y ago

Related - I've been using home-manager on MacOS, WSL2 and NixOS. Very nice to have a single, small file to manage my dot configs and CLI tools on various platforms

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chaorace 6y ago

I played with NixOS and am willing to admit that it was too difficult. It's probably great for devops, but it's just slightly too rigid for my own personal use. Let me give an example: let's say you want to use xmonad on top of Plasma. NixOS doesn't have any simple way to configure that. You have the mutually exclusive options for one or the other, basically. I know Nix is powerful enough to do this, if I wanted to go offroad and create custom packages/derivations, but that's the point where I am no longer happy with the utility/work tradeoff. It's what ultimately sent me packing back over to arch. When I came back to arch, I was left hankering for NixOS's declarative package management, if that could be somehow reconciled with the baseline arch package system. This led me to using the aconfmgr utility, which checks in packages and system configuration files into a home-based filetree. Once you've got it set up, aconfmgr can regenerate your current configuration from scratch, declaratively! I was able to check the aconfmgr tree into my dotfiles repo, so now it tracks my home state AND my system state. Unlike Nix, this still uses file-based configuration, but it's all versioned and fully reproducible, so I no longer particularly care about that caveat.

camehere3saydis 6y ago
> Let's say you want to use xmonad on top of Plasma. NixOS doesn't have any simple way to configure that. You have the mutually exclusive options for one or the other, basically. I was pleasantly surprised to find the contrary to be true: in my experience, NixOS is the only distro to give you _every_ DE+WM combination pre-generated as a login session that you can pick from the display manager.
- tetris11 6y ago
  Still waiting on LDM...
Ericson2314 6y ago
> xmonad on top of Plasma I gave up on XMonad + Gnome before I switched from Ubuntu to NixOS 6-7 years ago. Does XMonad + KDE work? I would love to get such combos working in NixOS / home-manager. (We also need to bite the bullet and get X-less Wayland working properly. I think I might be tempted to plan everything out at once so we don't get conflicting refactors or too much complexity.)

dang 6y ago

Too many previous threads to list, but here are a bunch: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E10%20nixos&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... The current thread seems pretty good so far, though, so we'll leave it.

haolez 6y ago

Kind of off topic, but I would love to have NixOps (https://github.com/NixOS/nixops https://github.com/NixOS/nixops) as an abstraction layer for every type of cloud service, and not just virtual machines (e.g. queues, object storages, etc). There is Terraform and Ansible, of course, but Nix seems like it could combine the strengths of both of them.

RaitoBezarius 6y ago
There are actual plugins for AWS, Hetzner, GCP and Azure (on an old version of NixOps) and it's quite easy to add support for your favorite cloud if there is a decent usable API.

tbenst 6y ago

Before installing NixOS, I’d recommend anyone on Linux to give home-manager a go first for the userspace declarative approach with Nix. After a year with full-time NixOS, I switched back to Ubuntu + home-manager as best of both worlds—declarative when feasible, imperative when convenient. [1] https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager

crvdgc 6y ago
I had the same experience as well. I tried NixOS once as my main desktop environment. I encountered two problems that made me switch to Ubuntu+Nix. And they work perfectly for their own purposes. One problem is dynamically linked binaries, where the library points to a global position (like /usr/lib). In NixOS, different builds can depend on different versions of the same binary, so there is no single global location. This is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. And normal cases can be fixed with the patchelf [^1] utility. I couldn't make it work with a Z3 binary, so I finally gave up. The other problem is when I tried to configure jackdbus. There's only one example [^2] configuration. It is marked as outdated by the wiki, and indeed none of the settings work for me. Then I realized these two are not problems that Nix tries to solve. Pointing to a global binary is okay for some quick fixes. And JACK module is better to work out-of-the-box, I don't want to dive into all of the configurations before I haven't even used it. Now I use Ubuntu for casual desktop applications and write Nix derivations for projects that need reproducibility. And I think I find my perfect balance. [^1]: https://github.com/NixOS/patchelf https://github.com/NixOS/patchelf [^2]: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/JACK https://nixos.wiki/wiki/JACK

amelius 6y ago

I'd love to try Nix. But, I'm using an Nvidia Jetson environment, which is based on a preinstalled Ubuntu 18.04, probably with lots of specific driver configurations that I don't want to touch (or reinvent). I've also learned that running Nix on top of Ubuntu is not the greatest idea, see e.g. [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16443323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16443323

mst 6y ago
A mildly insane possibility would be to install lxc and then use a system container to play with nix in.

nvarsj 6y ago

NixOS and the nix package manager are revolutionary OS tools, hampered by a convoluted, undocumented language and library (itself called Nix). Despite this, I think it's totally worth going through the pain of learning Nix to use NixOS. There is nothing else like it. I imagine other OS's will try to copy and borrow the ideas, in fact they are already doing this (see all the half baked immutable OS stuff out there...), but nothing is as good as NixOS at the moment. Note: A notable exception is GNU Guix, which is another excellent OS/package manager that is very similar to Nix, with the far more approachable Guile (scheme based). Unfortunately the ecosystem is just not large enough to be usable for practical purposes - also it's hampered by the usual aversion to non-free software.

agumonkey 6y ago

I wonder if it's leaking into other distros. Just like proglangs got destructuring and lambdas gradually.. maybe OSes are influenced by nix.

nvarsj 6y ago
Oh definitely. The whole concept of immutable OS management - this stuff all comes from NixOS's influence. You see it in Silverblue for example, and other mainstream distros. They are a pale imitation but the influence is there.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  There's also the reproducible build effort, which is somehow more parallel to nix, or cross pollinating than influenced.. but same spirit (and great work by lunar and his friends)

dchasson 6y ago

I enjoyed learning the difference between NixOS, nix (eg, nix-build, nix-env,...) Nix Language, and nixpkgs. Knowing the difference of tools in the belt is like knowing the blades themselves. You can always make your own tools. If I can't package something with nix, then I call it "metal"

EE84M3i 6y ago

The last time I looked into Nix (a few years back) the expression language was very under documented which made it very difficult to use (e.g. searching for lots of examples to copy paste, instead of working from first principles). Has this gotten better?

tomberek 6y ago

Nix is a powerful package manager. I can confidently compile and run multiple incompatible versions of software simultaneously. I can build projects from years ago. I can package large projects from different ecosystems (python 2/3, c/c++, go, Javascript, Octave, Rust) and be confident they will not interfere with each other. I can try bleeding edge software with no risk to it interfering with my system. It is faster and less hassle than juggling various Docker containers and VMs. It protects me from dependency hell. Using Nix to manage an operating system (ie: NixOS) then gives me those benefits for my entire machine. Then I get even more benefits when using Nix on any other (not even necessarily NixOS) machine by pushing around package closures and managing a simple binary cache. But overall: it makes me more productive. It is my secret weapon to manage the complexity of software development.

aporetics 6y ago

I read most of the comments up to this point and was surprised that no one has mentioned how the system config is versioned, and the boot loader allows you to select from past builds, making it incredibly easy to recover from config issues (and thus also easy to experiment with different configs without fear of having to waste hours recovering a certain state).

SkyMarshal 6y ago

I didn't realize how far along NixOS's package repo had come, but apparently it's in the top 3 now, according to this site linked from their news page: https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/total https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/total https://nixos.org/news.html https://nixos.org/news.html