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You probably don't have a problem that this solves. I.e., some people still download random zipfiles from the internet and install each individual app from a w

You probably don't have a problem that this solves. I.e., some people still download random zipfiles from the internet and install each individual app from a wizard dialog onto their Windows 10 machine. They find software repositories and package managers confusing and overengineered. I guess that's okay.

dmitriid 5y ago
> You probably don't have a problem that this solves. > They find software repositories and package managers confusing and overengineered. The screenshot is literally a mishmash of technical jargon with little to no relation to each other. sound.enable defined boolean asset resource enabled. What problem does it solve, exactly?
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  That's like asking "what problem does apt-get solve, exactly, with its technical jargon, when I can always download the software I want using Google Chrome?"
  - Narice 5y ago
    Yeah but here it's the level of jargon that is the problem, there is too much! This is a good project for sure but it is not ready for new users.
- amusedcyclist 5y ago
  If you think the words software repository and package manager are esoteric technical jargon then you don't need nix, which is completely fine. But it allows developers to identically reproduce builds of a software which depends on other software packages. Other package managers may depend on some global variables of your system, which nix avoids.
forgotpwd16 5y ago
>They find software repositories and package managers confusing and overengineered. And that's why big distros have created GUIs (e.g. Ubuntu's software center) that truly hide any technicalities. Nix-GUI, as it's now, will instead be more like Synaptic, it kinda makes life easier but you still require technical knowledge to use it.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I don't find package managers confusing but I do, in fact, find them overengineered. They solve at most 75% of application management problems with the fallback for the other 25% being "compile it from source yourself" and it takes an army of unpaid third party maintainers to pull that off. In my current estimation, Nix just solves an additional 5% at the cost of exponentially more overengineering.
CJefferson 5y ago
Honestly, that's so patronising I wonder if you are trolling? I use Debian and Redhat happily, also do plenty of Docker. I really want to love Nix and have tried a few times (even submitting some package updates), but just kept bouncing off it and giving up.
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  Good for you. That means you haven't encountered a problem that Nix is designed to solve. (Nix is very much a "worse is better" tool in the tradition of hacking something together out of existing tools until you a minimal working product. It's designed to solve a particular class of problems quickly and painlessly, even if the end result isn't "clean" or "elegant". The "clean" and "elegant" solutions to these problems are vastly more complex and overengineered.)
  - CJefferson 5y ago
    I believe I have a problem Nix is designed to solve (reproducible builds) all the time. However, one can work around it with enough pain and suffering on Ubuntu (I can write a shell script to download and build the specific GCC, GHC, rustc and other packages I need and build from source where required), and still find that much easier to distribute to my colleagues, rather than having to teach them to use Nix. What else is Nix good for? I'd be interested to know.
    - whateveracct 5y ago
      Nix allows you to abstract over your shell scripts. Like pack those fuckers in a derivation and now people can install them with Nix in a uniform way (and compose them with their own packages) instead of manually shell scripting. You can even use a single overlay to add a namespace to your company's nixpkgs, which will then allow your colleagues to discover all the versions of all those tools with nix repl > pkgs.CJefferson.ghc<TAB> and boom! All the GHC versions you've worked hard to package across branches and repos etc will be at their fingertips. As is always the case with FP, composition and abstraction is the big longterm win with Nix. No other comparable tool comes close on those axes.

dmitriid 5y ago

> You probably don't have a problem that this solves. > They find software repositories and package managers confusing and overengineered. The screenshot is literally a mishmash of technical jargon with little to no relation to each other. sound.enable defined boolean asset resource enabled. What problem does it solve, exactly?

otabdeveloper4 5y ago
That's like asking "what problem does apt-get solve, exactly, with its technical jargon, when I can always download the software I want using Google Chrome?"
- Narice 5y ago
  Yeah but here it's the level of jargon that is the problem, there is too much! This is a good project for sure but it is not ready for new users.
amusedcyclist 5y ago
If you think the words software repository and package manager are esoteric technical jargon then you don't need nix, which is completely fine. But it allows developers to identically reproduce builds of a software which depends on other software packages. Other package managers may depend on some global variables of your system, which nix avoids.

forgotpwd16 5y ago

>They find software repositories and package managers confusing and overengineered. And that's why big distros have created GUIs (e.g. Ubuntu's software center) that truly hide any technicalities. Nix-GUI, as it's now, will instead be more like Synaptic, it kinda makes life easier but you still require technical knowledge to use it.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

I don't find package managers confusing but I do, in fact, find them overengineered. They solve at most 75% of application management problems with the fallback for the other 25% being "compile it from source yourself" and it takes an army of unpaid third party maintainers to pull that off. In my current estimation, Nix just solves an additional 5% at the cost of exponentially more overengineering.

CJefferson 5y ago

Honestly, that's so patronising I wonder if you are trolling? I use Debian and Redhat happily, also do plenty of Docker. I really want to love Nix and have tried a few times (even submitting some package updates), but just kept bouncing off it and giving up.

otabdeveloper4 5y ago
Good for you. That means you haven't encountered a problem that Nix is designed to solve. (Nix is very much a "worse is better" tool in the tradition of hacking something together out of existing tools until you a minimal working product. It's designed to solve a particular class of problems quickly and painlessly, even if the end result isn't "clean" or "elegant". The "clean" and "elegant" solutions to these problems are vastly more complex and overengineered.)
- CJefferson 5y ago
  I believe I have a problem Nix is designed to solve (reproducible builds) all the time. However, one can work around it with enough pain and suffering on Ubuntu (I can write a shell script to download and build the specific GCC, GHC, rustc and other packages I need and build from source where required), and still find that much easier to distribute to my colleagues, rather than having to teach them to use Nix. What else is Nix good for? I'd be interested to know.
  - whateveracct 5y ago
    Nix allows you to abstract over your shell scripts. Like pack those fuckers in a derivation and now people can install them with Nix in a uniform way (and compose them with their own packages) instead of manually shell scripting. You can even use a single overlay to add a namespace to your company's nixpkgs, which will then allow your colleagues to discover all the versions of all those tools with nix repl > pkgs.CJefferson.ghc<TAB> and boom! All the GHC versions you've worked hard to package across branches and repos etc will be at their fingertips. As is always the case with FP, composition and abstraction is the big longterm win with Nix. No other comparable tool comes close on those axes.