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> Is either #NixOS or #GUIX usable as an OS for day-to-day use (coding, browsing, occasional gaming)? Yeah, definitively. I use only NixOS on all my machines f

by m45t3r 5y ago

> Is either #NixOS or #GUIX usable as an OS for day-to-day use (coding, browsing, occasional gaming)? Yeah, definitively. I use only NixOS on all my machines for about 3 years already. My machines are working so well nowadays that I rarely have to change anything [1], even during major upgrades (between stable versions). I don't fear anymore if a machine could break tomorrow. I know that it will be very easy to restore it to a working state. Last time my working notebook broke I didn't even bother making a backup (except from some data on my Home), just installed my config and it worked exactly it was working before. Also, I don't fear changing my system: if something brokes after the changes, I can just rollback. I use for all those three purposes, mainly coding and browsing, but some light gaming. Steam actually works better on NixOS than any other distro I tested before thanks to the isolation that Nix provides. > a question on dev environment isolation. [...] Or is it better to just use their respective package managers on top of regular Linux? I imagine those are part of the same question. Generally what I recommend for newbies is to start small: yeah, it is fine to continue using your respective package manager, specially if you don't need "native compilation" [2]. After you get more experience with Nix though, I would recommend you to start isolating your development environments. Nix has its own `nix-shell`, that it is kinda bare-bones but works well, and can be very practical once you use something like `nix-direnv` (https://github.com/nix-community/nix-direnv/ https://github.com/nix-community/nix-direnv/). There is also this `devshell` (https://numtide.github.io/devshell/intro.html https://numtide.github.io/devshell/intro.html) project that is interesting. > Also, anyone here doing desktop #virtualization? Is there a sense of running a #VM per project? Is that a viable alternative to dual-booing Windows when I want to do some Windows dev or play a game? I put those two questions together because yes, I ran desktop virtualization on NixOS, and yes, I ran Windows on a VM to play games thanks to PCI-e passthrough (my dedicated GPU is connected directly to the Windows VM so the performance is near native) [3]. Again, I will not recommend you do to this right after starting NixOS since it is one more thing to possible frustrate you, but just so you know that it works and works well, specially because my VM configuration on NixOS is also on my `/etc/configuration.nix` and it is fully reproducible. Coincidentally I was messing with my VM settings yesterday and "broke" my VM multiple times, however I just run one command and restored it to the previous state. However I never bothered to dual-boot NixOS/Windows, because I barely use Windows nowadays so I find rebooting my system just to use Windows bothersome. Probably not your case, so maybe dual-boot makes more sense. This article should help and seems very easy to do (again, disclaimer, not tested because I never needed it): https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Dual_Booting_NixOS_and_Windows https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Dual_Booting_NixOS_and_Windows. About the VM per project, unless you want to do this for some other reason (security maybe?), you don't need to. As I said before, you can use things like `nix-shell` and this will already give isolation enough for development purposes. --- Some closing words: remember, start small! Nix/NixOS is a journey. You will learn eventually what you need. However, if you try too many things at the same time you will feel frustrated. The official documentation is good, however it kinda assumes that you know what we are talking about already, and it is also very big and not well separated in steps, so it feels overwhelming for newbies. To supplant this there are many blog posts, however some of them are out-of-date (it shouldn't be too much of an issue though, since Nix tries really hard to backwards compatible). You will eventually need to learn the minimum of the language to read the source code. It is less difficult than it seems, because while Nix as a language is strange at the first glance, it is a very well designed DSL for the domain. After sometime editing your own configuration you will naturally learn the Nix language, and can start to understand what is happening. For where to start, I recommend trying to replicate your current system in a NixOS install. If you already use another Linux distro try to get the same desktop environment and packages that you already use. If you're coming from Windows/macOS try Gnome or KDE. Just tweak the system until you're happy with the result. Eventually try Home-Manager to manage your Home configuration in the same way as in NixOS (fully declarative), and once you feel happy, you can try Flakes (making you configuration fully reproducible). This process can takes months or even years, but don't bother or rush, just continue your journey. It really pays off in the long run. [1]: well, I am on a "coding spree" right now so I am doing many changes, most to refactor some things that I wasn't happy before; but before this coding spree my configuration didn't change significantly for almost a year. [2]: what I call having to compile C/C++ libraries in an another language like Python (giving it an example here, almost any language has a similar mechanism since C/C++ ecosystem is huge), that generally needs to dynamically link with whatever you have in your system installed. This is possible on Nix/NixOS, and easy once you know what you're doing, but it is different from anything else so it does trip newbies. [3]: if you're interested on this approach, I used this guide when started: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/nixos-vfio-pcie-passthrough/130916 https://forum.level1techs.com/t/nixos-vfio-pcie-passthrough/.... To get it fully reproducible it though, there is no way on NixOS itself yet, however there is a good guide here: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOps/Virtualization#Setting_Up_the_Guests https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOps/Virtualization#Setting_Up_the...

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Thanks for the detailed writeup, and all the pointers in it! > About the VM per project, unless you want to do this for some other reason (security maybe?), you don't need to. As I said before, you can use things like `nix-shell` and this will already give isolation enough for development purposes. That's great to know. I don't have security requirements there - I'm just looking for a way to isolate projects along with their dependencies and supporting software (e.g. if I need a one-off installation of some program to create project-specific assets). The problem I'm trying to solve is the system getting messy over time - accruing multiple versions of runtimes for programming languages, system configuration changes, pinned library versions etc., all because every other project needs some OS tuning or system-wide dependency. Eventually, I always end up hitting a roadblock where something I need now is incompatible with something I changed 2 years earlier no longer remember why. So I'd like to keep various projects and activities isolated, and to be able to just get rid of them when they're no longer needed. The reason I'm asking about VMs is because I recall reading a blogpost or a HN comment where someone described how they're achieving what I'm after by running a hypervisor on their main machine, and doing everything in one-off VMs. I can't find that post/comment now, and I'm left wondering if this is something people do, and what the tradeoffs are.
- m45t3r 5y ago
  > The problem I'm trying to solve is the system getting messy over time - accruing multiple versions of runtimes for programming languages, system configuration changes, pinned library versions etc., all because every other project needs some OS tuning or system-wide dependency. Eventually, I always end up hitting a roadblock where something I need now is incompatible with something I changed 2 years earlier no longer remember why. So I'd like to keep various projects and activities isolated, and to be able to just get rid of them when they're no longer needed. Don't worry, this issue is solved with Nix/NixOS itself. If you use `nix-shell` to setup an dev environment for which project, you will generally have a `shell.nix` or `default.nix` file in the same directory as the project. For example: with import <nixpkgs> {}; mkShell { name = "myProject"; buildInputs = with pkgs; [ gcc python39 lua ]; } And once you use `nix-shell` inside the directory that contains this file above, it will download GCC, Python 3.9 and Lua, and put them on PATH. If you do a Ctrl+D, it will exit this shell and you won't have those 3 programs in your PATH anymore (assuming of course that you don't have them installed in your system). BTW, this is where `nix-direnv` enters: it will do the `nix-shell` part and Ctrl+D management automatically for you. So once you enter in the project directory, it will automatically activate the `nix-shell`, once you exit, it will automatically exit `nix-shell`. The Python case is specially interesting because if you have Python 3.7 in your system PATH, this shell will override the system Python, so only in this project you will have Python 3.9. To avoid re-downloading them every time, Nix will actually cache those dependencies. So to really remove them from your system you will need to run the garbage collector (`nix-collect-garbage -d`), but since they're not in your PATH they will not conflict with other packages in your system. It is something similar to NixOS (however in this case this is system-wide): { pkgs, ... }: { environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ gcc python39 lua ]; } In this case, GCC, Python 3.9 and Lua will be available on your system PATH after you do a `nixos-rebuild swtich`. If you remove them they will be deleted from the system PATH after running `nixos-rebuild switch` again, creating a new generation. The generation part is important: in case things break, you can go back to the previous version using `nixos-rebuild switch --rollback`. So let's say you changed Python 3.9 to 3.10 on your system but it actually broke something important (let's say it is a script that is important for your desktop, so now you don't have a desktop anymore): you can just call `nixos-rebuild switch --rollback` and everything will go back to working again, and afterwards you can commit your changes and run `nixos-rebuild switch` to commit them.

by m45t3r 5y ago

TeMPOraL 5y ago

Thanks for the detailed writeup, and all the pointers in it! > About the VM per project, unless you want to do this for some other reason (security maybe?), you don't need to. As I said before, you can use things like `nix-shell` and this will already give isolation enough for development purposes. That's great to know. I don't have security requirements there - I'm just looking for a way to isolate projects along with their dependencies and supporting software (e.g. if I need a one-off installation of some program to create project-specific assets). The problem I'm trying to solve is the system getting messy over time - accruing multiple versions of runtimes for programming languages, system configuration changes, pinned library versions etc., all because every other project needs some OS tuning or system-wide dependency. Eventually, I always end up hitting a roadblock where something I need now is incompatible with something I changed 2 years earlier no longer remember why. So I'd like to keep various projects and activities isolated, and to be able to just get rid of them when they're no longer needed. The reason I'm asking about VMs is because I recall reading a blogpost or a HN comment where someone described how they're achieving what I'm after by running a hypervisor on their main machine, and doing everything in one-off VMs. I can't find that post/comment now, and I'm left wondering if this is something people do, and what the tradeoffs are.

m45t3r 5y ago
> The problem I'm trying to solve is the system getting messy over time - accruing multiple versions of runtimes for programming languages, system configuration changes, pinned library versions etc., all because every other project needs some OS tuning or system-wide dependency. Eventually, I always end up hitting a roadblock where something I need now is incompatible with something I changed 2 years earlier no longer remember why. So I'd like to keep various projects and activities isolated, and to be able to just get rid of them when they're no longer needed. Don't worry, this issue is solved with Nix/NixOS itself. If you use `nix-shell` to setup an dev environment for which project, you will generally have a `shell.nix` or `default.nix` file in the same directory as the project. For example: with import <nixpkgs> {}; mkShell { name = "myProject"; buildInputs = with pkgs; [ gcc python39 lua ]; } And once you use `nix-shell` inside the directory that contains this file above, it will download GCC, Python 3.9 and Lua, and put them on PATH. If you do a Ctrl+D, it will exit this shell and you won't have those 3 programs in your PATH anymore (assuming of course that you don't have them installed in your system). BTW, this is where `nix-direnv` enters: it will do the `nix-shell` part and Ctrl+D management automatically for you. So once you enter in the project directory, it will automatically activate the `nix-shell`, once you exit, it will automatically exit `nix-shell`. The Python case is specially interesting because if you have Python 3.7 in your system PATH, this shell will override the system Python, so only in this project you will have Python 3.9. To avoid re-downloading them every time, Nix will actually cache those dependencies. So to really remove them from your system you will need to run the garbage collector (`nix-collect-garbage -d`), but since they're not in your PATH they will not conflict with other packages in your system. It is something similar to NixOS (however in this case this is system-wide): { pkgs, ... }: { environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ gcc python39 lua ]; } In this case, GCC, Python 3.9 and Lua will be available on your system PATH after you do a `nixos-rebuild swtich`. If you remove them they will be deleted from the system PATH after running `nixos-rebuild switch` again, creating a new generation. The generation part is important: in case things break, you can go back to the previous version using `nixos-rebuild switch --rollback`. So let's say you changed Python 3.9 to 3.10 on your system but it actually broke something important (let's say it is a script that is important for your desktop, so now you don't have a desktop anymore): you can just call `nixos-rebuild switch --rollback` and everything will go back to working again, and afterwards you can commit your changes and run `nixos-rebuild switch` to commit them.