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It can get you two major things. Docker-like reproducibility for any development project in a much more convenient way. And the ability to try lots of software

by nextos 3y ago

It can get you two major things. Docker-like reproducibility for any development project in a much more convenient way. And the ability to try lots of software without installing it. For me, the last one is a gamechanger, as I am no longer worried about littering my system with tons of dependencies. Say I want to convert an eBook I downloaded. I can quickly use Calibre for a one-off thing, with nix run nixpkgs#calibre.

sph 3y ago
I get Docker-actual reproducibility with Fedora Silverblue and toolboxes. Enter one of my Arch/Fedora containers, install Calibre without affecting the host. Even better than Nix because I can test custom distributions, rather than each environment simply being another NixOS. In fact, I've departed from vanilla Silverblue, as now my base image is an actual, bona-fide Docker container as well. I feel like the immutable Linux OS is the pragmatic approach, whereas NixOS is the pure, ideal way that requires a lot of changes to tools and workflow to work. Maybe even in this case, worse is better.
- pkulak 3y ago
  Yeah, Silverblue is pretty great. But Nix and Silverblue both require changes to your workflow. I like Nix more, but I don’t think one is objectively better.
jfoutz 3y ago
I'm new to nix/nixos but gradually building up my environment. it's like having your whole OS in git. it's amazing. want to try out some nightly build? no problem. on most computers (personal, home computers) the various lib dirs get scary after a while. repoquery can help, but is kind of a hassle. if some executable `foo` depends on some specific behavior in some version of some library, it's fine. that weird library can stay in place, I can try out nightly's of foo, can always rollback to the system that used to work, and can flip to the new foo when it's ready. I think it's a good practice to wipe and re provision from time to time to make sure provisioning and backups actually work, but like, you can screw around with _crazy_ things and not really have to worry about having to rebuild the whole thing. (well, I haven't yet) I still will, because that's how I am. but I can do it when I feel like it, not when I fucked up. it's so easy to un fuck a nix system. I guess the big caveat is, this is a hobby. I haven't used nix for work. Back in the day, I did support docker in production when the kernel patches were coming pretty quickly. Finding the right balance of patch level, and libc version, that would support docker, and the other stuff that needed to run was a pretty complicated dance, and missing a step would be, not great. Knowing what I know now, even as a hobbyist, I probably could have made my life a lot easier back then.
- kaba0 3y ago
  Exactly, I have been a huge distro hopper to the point that having the same install for a month was already at the high end (though I did keep my home partition). Now I have 2 years old NixOS installs on personal machines and they do not get bloated with packages that the package manager can no longer handle, and is basically always at a state as if it were freshly installed. It just “feels right”. To me, that makes the occasional edge cases worthwhile to suffer through (some binary package, mostly) - especially that in most cases something like steam-run is enough to make it work. When it isn’t, systemd-nspawn can boot you into any systemd distro you would want.
bpye 3y ago
I also really like flakes. I know they are still experimental today - though hopefully that'll improve with this RFC - but they make it trivial to have an out of tree package. For example I just recently created a flake for a vendor OpenOCD fork [0] - and now I can reference that in my home-manager config or from some other project. [0] - https://github.com/benpye/openocd/blob/mrs-2023-08-07/default.nix https://github.com/benpye/openocd/blob/mrs-2023-08-07/defaul...
pharmakom 3y ago
This is already solved by Docker. I know Docker has a bunch of issues and Nix is clearly a more elegant design, but in practice Docker works fine (at least for my use case).
- midchildan 3y ago
  It's really not. Docker is a tool for binary distribution. Docker images are those binaries. Dockerfiles used to create Docker images don't have any mechanism to ensure reproducibility whatsoever. Unlike Nix, you can't take a Dockerfile and expect builds to succeed. Furthermore, Docker images are monoliths that's isolated from the system. Instead of system administrators choosing the isolation boundaries that best fits their requirements, the image packagers put walls around each and every image. As a result, Docker containers are inflexible compared to traditional Unix applications. Piecing together multiple Docker containers is a clunky experience. In contrast, Nix is an integrated build/configuration/deployment system. Entire systems down to the package level can be reproduced from Nix expressions. It also gives system administrators power over the whole process. Administrators have control over things like how each components are pieced together, and where isolation boundaries are placed. They can even make tweaks to the package build steps. Docker can't substitute Nix. It's not a matter of elegance. Their features and capabilities are wildly different.
  - pharmakom 3y ago
    I agree for the most part except I don't find that this matters in practice: > Dockerfiles used to create Docker images don't have any mechanism to ensure reproducibility whatsoever simply generate it once and keep it as an immutable artefact
deleted 3y ago
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by nextos 3y ago

sph 3y ago

I get Docker-actual reproducibility with Fedora Silverblue and toolboxes. Enter one of my Arch/Fedora containers, install Calibre without affecting the host. Even better than Nix because I can test custom distributions, rather than each environment simply being another NixOS. In fact, I've departed from vanilla Silverblue, as now my base image is an actual, bona-fide Docker container as well. I feel like the immutable Linux OS is the pragmatic approach, whereas NixOS is the pure, ideal way that requires a lot of changes to tools and workflow to work. Maybe even in this case, worse is better.

pkulak 3y ago
Yeah, Silverblue is pretty great. But Nix and Silverblue both require changes to your workflow. I like Nix more, but I don’t think one is objectively better.

jfoutz 3y ago

I'm new to nix/nixos but gradually building up my environment. it's like having your whole OS in git. it's amazing. want to try out some nightly build? no problem. on most computers (personal, home computers) the various lib dirs get scary after a while. repoquery can help, but is kind of a hassle. if some executable `foo` depends on some specific behavior in some version of some library, it's fine. that weird library can stay in place, I can try out nightly's of foo, can always rollback to the system that used to work, and can flip to the new foo when it's ready. I think it's a good practice to wipe and re provision from time to time to make sure provisioning and backups actually work, but like, you can screw around with _crazy_ things and not really have to worry about having to rebuild the whole thing. (well, I haven't yet) I still will, because that's how I am. but I can do it when I feel like it, not when I fucked up. it's so easy to un fuck a nix system. I guess the big caveat is, this is a hobby. I haven't used nix for work. Back in the day, I did support docker in production when the kernel patches were coming pretty quickly. Finding the right balance of patch level, and libc version, that would support docker, and the other stuff that needed to run was a pretty complicated dance, and missing a step would be, not great. Knowing what I know now, even as a hobbyist, I probably could have made my life a lot easier back then.

kaba0 3y ago
Exactly, I have been a huge distro hopper to the point that having the same install for a month was already at the high end (though I did keep my home partition). Now I have 2 years old NixOS installs on personal machines and they do not get bloated with packages that the package manager can no longer handle, and is basically always at a state as if it were freshly installed. It just “feels right”. To me, that makes the occasional edge cases worthwhile to suffer through (some binary package, mostly) - especially that in most cases something like steam-run is enough to make it work. When it isn’t, systemd-nspawn can boot you into any systemd distro you would want.

bpye 3y ago

I also really like flakes. I know they are still experimental today - though hopefully that'll improve with this RFC - but they make it trivial to have an out of tree package. For example I just recently created a flake for a vendor OpenOCD fork [0] - and now I can reference that in my home-manager config or from some other project. [0] - https://github.com/benpye/openocd/blob/mrs-2023-08-07/default.nix https://github.com/benpye/openocd/blob/mrs-2023-08-07/defaul...

pharmakom 3y ago

This is already solved by Docker. I know Docker has a bunch of issues and Nix is clearly a more elegant design, but in practice Docker works fine (at least for my use case).

midchildan 3y ago
It's really not. Docker is a tool for binary distribution. Docker images are those binaries. Dockerfiles used to create Docker images don't have any mechanism to ensure reproducibility whatsoever. Unlike Nix, you can't take a Dockerfile and expect builds to succeed. Furthermore, Docker images are monoliths that's isolated from the system. Instead of system administrators choosing the isolation boundaries that best fits their requirements, the image packagers put walls around each and every image. As a result, Docker containers are inflexible compared to traditional Unix applications. Piecing together multiple Docker containers is a clunky experience. In contrast, Nix is an integrated build/configuration/deployment system. Entire systems down to the package level can be reproduced from Nix expressions. It also gives system administrators power over the whole process. Administrators have control over things like how each components are pieced together, and where isolation boundaries are placed. They can even make tweaks to the package build steps. Docker can't substitute Nix. It's not a matter of elegance. Their features and capabilities are wildly different.
- pharmakom 3y ago
  I agree for the most part except I don't find that this matters in practice: > Dockerfiles used to create Docker images don't have any mechanism to ensure reproducibility whatsoever simply generate it once and keep it as an immutable artefact

deleted 3y ago

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