Nix is an abstraction around `tar -xf && make && make install`. In fact, those commands are even executed by nix, just in a sterile reproducible environment. W

Nix is an abstraction around `tar -xf && make && make install`. In fact, those commands are even executed by nix, just in a sterile reproducible environment. What sets nix apart from other package managers is that you are never running `make install` on your root filesystem, but `make` can still dynamically link to libraries (that also aren't installed on the root filesystem) without editing the Makefile directly to find them. This way, you can't break existing packages, you can trivially roll back changes (because updates are new instances), and you can always start over fresh. The only problem is that you have to wrap every package in a derivation, then publish that derivation somewhere. Right now, all derivations are tracked in a single git repo (with dozens of branches), all coordinated over GitHub Issues, and referenced by nix itself by an arbitrary (versionless) name in a global namespace in this file: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/top-level/... That last bit can be avoided by using pinning and flakes, but it's still the default way to use nixpkgs, and documentation doesn't clarify much or offer a better consistent UX paradigm.