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I moved to nix around Nov last year and couldn't be happier, the motto 'nix fixes that' is true. First time I can say linux is trouble free. Upgrades are painle

I moved to nix around Nov last year and couldn't be happier, the motto 'nix fixes that' is true. First time I can say linux is trouble free. Upgrades are painless. Dev environments, reproducible. Largest repository of packages in the linux world. Next to zero time wasted configuring things. Foundation LLMs now know enough nix to get you out of trouble most of the time. It's perfect as a linux experience.

zachlatta 1y ago
Can you link your dotfiles? I’ve been having trouble figuring out a good way to structure mine
- i915 1y ago
  Try using https://github.com/numtide/blueprint https://github.com/numtide/blueprint
- sshine 1y ago
  Yes, that’s easy. Here’s a very small example: https://github.com/sshine/nix/blob/main/shared/home-manager.nix https://github.com/sshine/nix/blob/main/shared/home-manager.... My servers don’t have that many dotfiles because most server software can be configured in /etc (zsh, vim), while my work computers have a lot of dotfiles symlinked into ~/.config/ via Nix, e.g. VSCodium, ghostty, … Most people prefer to Nix up their dotfiles, which provides some advantages (e.g. universal styling via Stylix), but the main drawback that I’m not buying is: I can’t share my app-specific config with non-Nix users. But if you’re looking for a cheaper (in terms of complexity) dotfiles manager: https://github.com/yarlson/lnk https://github.com/yarlson/lnk
TeeMassive 1y ago
Until your use case hasn't been deciphered by a Nix scribe and then you have to fight the magic.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  Which makes "next to zero time wasted configuring things" false, very much so. You will have to write your own derivation(s) using Nix[1]. In any case, from the article, what does not apply to Guix, too? I am leaning towards Guix because of its language (Scheme, i.e. Lisp-y), but I wonder about the differences between the two, today (besides userbase and hype). [1] https://nix.dev/tutorials/nix-language.html https://nix.dev/tutorials/nix-language.html
  - mplanchard 1y ago
    Mainly the mindshare. Nix has a massive set of packages. You’ll have to build more derivations for guix.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      I assumed that, but "only" that? I genuinely wonder. I did not get around to try Nix yet.
      - mplanchard 1y ago
        I think it’s “only” that yeah. Both have fundamentally the same capabilities. Nixpgs may provide more out of the box library functionality than guix, I’m not sure, but as far as I know there’s nothing possible in one that isn’t possible in the other. Would be glad to be corrected by anyone with more experience, though. I’ve run NixOS for years now, but have only dabbled with guix.
    - pxc 1y ago
      Guix already has as many packages as Nixpkgs did back when I started using it, and like Nixpkgs, the package set is growing exponentially. What you say is true but it also seems to me like for many, Guix already provides a very useful starting point.
      - mplanchard 1y ago
sepositus 1y ago
Welcome to the honeymoon phase. Mine lasted about a year. Eventually you will have to leave the comfortable area of "those who have done it before" and engage with some long, unwieldy, mostly undecipherable stack trace. When I asked a long-time Nix vet why he thinks people leave, he provided the most insightful answer I've seen yet: they just don't try hard enough.
- atrus 1y ago
  Why is it inevitable that you have to leave the comfortable area of "those who have done it before" though? Most of the benefit of nix for me is maintaining a configuration for a couple computers in a way that's easy to backup, upgrade, and recover with.
  - sepositus 1y ago
    For reference, I use Nix to manage three different machines, always via home-manager and nix-darwin (I left NixOS awhile ago and haven't looked back). I don't think it's "inevitable" that you'll hit the difficulty wall, but certainly likely. As an example, I was recently playing with Pyinfra which is like a pure Python version of Ansible. It turns out that one of the dependencies uses an archaic version of setuptools and the package owner had inserted some _very_ hacky code that ended up breaking on two of my systems. Now I'm relatively experienced with Nix, so it took me a few hours to track down, but it would have been days if not impossible for a beginner. Nowadays I package brew along with my machines and as soon as something smells funky in Nix I just manage it with brew. Much more peaceful.
- nextos 1y ago
  I think Nix is getting an unfair reputation for being too hard. Simple things are IMHO simpler in Nix than in any other distribution, and what one needs to know to accomplish them is tiny. It has basically reduced my sysadmin maintenance tasks to zero. In case of regressions, Nix makes it trivially easy to go back in time 2 or 3 years, cherrypick some packages and install them, or change your entire desktop environment, and then go back to the previous state with no effort. Nix is hard if you need to build something difficult to package or something that has very unusual or dirty build processes. If you need to that regularly, Nix is not worth the effort unless you are an organization that values reproducibility and is prepared to pay for its cost upfront. If these particularly messy usecases are something that you don't encounter so frequently, you can always use an escape hatch to be able to make your install impure. For instance, distrobox is quite convenient to run e.g. an Arch or Ubuntu container. In my case, this has been helpful to run Julia, whose Nix packages are quite brittle.

zachlatta 1y ago

Can you link your dotfiles? I’ve been having trouble figuring out a good way to structure mine

i915 1y ago
Try using https://github.com/numtide/blueprint https://github.com/numtide/blueprint
sshine 1y ago
Yes, that’s easy. Here’s a very small example: https://github.com/sshine/nix/blob/main/shared/home-manager.nix https://github.com/sshine/nix/blob/main/shared/home-manager.... My servers don’t have that many dotfiles because most server software can be configured in /etc (zsh, vim), while my work computers have a lot of dotfiles symlinked into ~/.config/ via Nix, e.g. VSCodium, ghostty, … Most people prefer to Nix up their dotfiles, which provides some advantages (e.g. universal styling via Stylix), but the main drawback that I’m not buying is: I can’t share my app-specific config with non-Nix users. But if you’re looking for a cheaper (in terms of complexity) dotfiles manager: https://github.com/yarlson/lnk https://github.com/yarlson/lnk

TeeMassive 1y ago

Until your use case hasn't been deciphered by a Nix scribe and then you have to fight the magic.

johnisgood 1y ago
Which makes "next to zero time wasted configuring things" false, very much so. You will have to write your own derivation(s) using Nix[1]. In any case, from the article, what does not apply to Guix, too? I am leaning towards Guix because of its language (Scheme, i.e. Lisp-y), but I wonder about the differences between the two, today (besides userbase and hype). [1] https://nix.dev/tutorials/nix-language.html https://nix.dev/tutorials/nix-language.html
- mplanchard 1y ago
  Mainly the mindshare. Nix has a massive set of packages. You’ll have to build more derivations for guix.
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    I assumed that, but "only" that? I genuinely wonder. I did not get around to try Nix yet.
    - mplanchard 1y ago
      I think it’s “only” that yeah. Both have fundamentally the same capabilities. Nixpgs may provide more out of the box library functionality than guix, I’m not sure, but as far as I know there’s nothing possible in one that isn’t possible in the other. Would be glad to be corrected by anyone with more experience, though. I’ve run NixOS for years now, but have only dabbled with guix.
  - pxc 1y ago
    Guix already has as many packages as Nixpkgs did back when I started using it, and like Nixpkgs, the package set is growing exponentially. What you say is true but it also seems to me like for many, Guix already provides a very useful starting point.
    - mplanchard 1y ago

sepositus 1y ago

Welcome to the honeymoon phase. Mine lasted about a year. Eventually you will have to leave the comfortable area of "those who have done it before" and engage with some long, unwieldy, mostly undecipherable stack trace. When I asked a long-time Nix vet why he thinks people leave, he provided the most insightful answer I've seen yet: they just don't try hard enough.

atrus 1y ago
Why is it inevitable that you have to leave the comfortable area of "those who have done it before" though? Most of the benefit of nix for me is maintaining a configuration for a couple computers in a way that's easy to backup, upgrade, and recover with.
- sepositus 1y ago
  For reference, I use Nix to manage three different machines, always via home-manager and nix-darwin (I left NixOS awhile ago and haven't looked back). I don't think it's "inevitable" that you'll hit the difficulty wall, but certainly likely. As an example, I was recently playing with Pyinfra which is like a pure Python version of Ansible. It turns out that one of the dependencies uses an archaic version of setuptools and the package owner had inserted some _very_ hacky code that ended up breaking on two of my systems. Now I'm relatively experienced with Nix, so it took me a few hours to track down, but it would have been days if not impossible for a beginner. Nowadays I package brew along with my machines and as soon as something smells funky in Nix I just manage it with brew. Much more peaceful.
nextos 1y ago
I think Nix is getting an unfair reputation for being too hard. Simple things are IMHO simpler in Nix than in any other distribution, and what one needs to know to accomplish them is tiny. It has basically reduced my sysadmin maintenance tasks to zero. In case of regressions, Nix makes it trivially easy to go back in time 2 or 3 years, cherrypick some packages and install them, or change your entire desktop environment, and then go back to the previous state with no effort. Nix is hard if you need to build something difficult to package or something that has very unusual or dirty build processes. If you need to that regularly, Nix is not worth the effort unless you are an organization that values reproducibility and is prepared to pay for its cost upfront. If these particularly messy usecases are something that you don't encounter so frequently, you can always use an escape hatch to be able to make your install impure. For instance, distrobox is quite convenient to run e.g. an Arch or Ubuntu container. In my case, this has been helpful to run Julia, whose Nix packages are quite brittle.