Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What is Nix and why you should try it

yakking.branchable.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 201 posts

Re: What is Nix and why you should try it

#51

Post by jitl »

philipov wrote: post #44
mkl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It apparently works in WSL [1], so Windows needn't be an issue. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/64xyd7/nix_package_m...

Do you use Windows 10 Creators Update on production? It needs to work on Windows Server 2012 or no dice. Maybe Nix will be an option in 5 years when companies upgrade their servers, but that's not an option now.

You could say the same thing about Windows: Windows just isn’t an option yet.... maybe in 5 years when WSL is performant and MSFT has open-sourced enough to not be a threat to more cautious companies.

Re: What is Nix and why you should try it

#52

Post by Filligree »

ris wrote: post #45
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #33

My experience with Nix was a real pleasure, and a complete failure. I set out with the goal of building a development environment for a software I was working on. I thought - Nix sounds like a better Docker, where it's possible to choose package versions independently of the rest of the system. It's perfect for testing! I found the package description language refreshing - it was powerful without getting too complica…

Although other people have different opinions to me, I don't really see Nix as something for the desktop, but for development, deployment and server software it's a killer solution for me.

None of what he mentioned was desktop-specific. GPUs are useful, and if CUDA is involved then it's being used for acceleration of some kind, which can perfectly well be done on servers.

I agree that Nix is hard to deal with when it comes to binary distributions of any kind, which includes CUDA.

Re: What is Nix and why you should try it

#53

Post by Filligree »

afarrell wrote: post #25
Jeaye wrote: post #11

I recently wrote about my experience using NixOS on my VPS [1]; it's truly a very different way of approaching systems administration and Nix is at the heart of it. While I think the Nix expression language has a negative impact on usability, Nix still ends up being a net gain for not only entire OSs, but also reproducible environments for packages on many other OSs. 1: https://blog.jeaye.com/2017/07/30/nixos-revisit…

Oooh! Thanks for linking this write-up. I've been thinking of playing around with Nix and basically only be able to do it on a VPS. Before I get started though, what things could I consider implicit prerequisites of running Nix? For example: I've never built a Debian or RPM package. Would I be better served gaining some background in OS package management before diving into this?

Most of what you'd learn playing with other OSs, you'd need to unlrearn to work with Nix. So... nothing much really.

Read the Nix Pills series, that'll teach you more than any amount of playing with non-Nix software.

Re: What is Nix and why you should try it

#54

Post by k__ »

nextos wrote: post #6
philipov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having never used Nix before, I would like to know what kind of usability issues it faces. For me, the biggest one is that I can't use it at clients running a Windows shop. That's a blocker.

I think biggest ones are i) nix command is a bit complex, but it's getting redesigned [1] & ii) nixpkg definitions sometimes contain a lot of cruft. I've found Guix and GuixSD, which are a GNU-blessed Guile Scheme-based reimplementation of Nix and NixOS, more aesthetically pleasing. Quite simple and elegant in fact. The major differences are that Guix DSLs are implemented on top of Scheme, whereas Nix uses a custom D…

When will the redesign be merged?

It's over a year that I first read about Nix and they talked about the redesign.

Re: What is Nix and why you should try it

#55

Post by jitl »

afarrell wrote: post #25
Jeaye wrote: post #11

I recently wrote about my experience using NixOS on my VPS [1]; it's truly a very different way of approaching systems administration and Nix is at the heart of it. While I think the Nix expression language has a negative impact on usability, Nix still ends up being a net gain for not only entire OSs, but also reproducible environments for packages on many other OSs. 1: https://blog.jeaye.com/2017/07/30/nixos-revisit…

Oooh! Thanks for linking this write-up. I've been thinking of playing around with Nix and basically only be able to do it on a VPS. Before I get started though, what things could I consider implicit prerequisites of running Nix? For example: I've never built a Debian or RPM package. Would I be better served gaining some background in OS package management before diving into this?

No: each package manager had its own strange rules and concepts. I’ve worked with deb packaging, and I wouldn’t say that experience transferred to working on Homebrew or Nix. You might as well start with what you want to use.

Re: What is Nix and why you should try it

#56

Post by jitl »

k__ wrote: post #29
ldlework wrote: post #15

I have recently started looking into Nix to solve the problem of dotfile deployment to new OSX workstations. When you get a new laptop, you clone your dotfiles, maybe symlink them to your home directory -- and then what? Nix solves this problem for me by coupling my dotfile deployment with the installation of the related software. The learning curve has been absolutely tremendous, however. That said, the support on F…

Nice. I started using macOS 5 months ago and it felt a bit as a step back coming from Linux. Does Nix work good with macOS?

Yep

Re: What is Nix and why you should try it

#57

Post by vog »

dhruvio wrote: post #19

I can vouch for the immense improvement Nix has made to my software development process. I use NixOS on my desktop and laptop. At the OS-level, it gets a lot of things right: reproducible, immutable system configs; lightweight containers; devops with declarative configs. At a software project level, nix-shell is an indispensible tool. Compilers and interpreters aren't even part of my system-wide config; instead each…

Naive question:

Isn't all that also true for Guix?

If so, why do your prefer Nix over Guix?

Re: What is Nix and why you should try it

#58

Post by philipov »

jitl wrote: post #51
philipov wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use Windows 10 Creators Update on production? It needs to work on Windows Server 2012 or no dice. Maybe Nix will be an option in 5 years when companies upgrade their servers, but that's not an option now.

You could say the same thing about Windows: Windows just isn’t an option yet.... maybe in 5 years when WSL is performant and MSFT has open-sourced enough to not be a threat to more cautious companies.

No, I don't think you can say that. The point is that I have clients that use linux, clients that use windows, and clients that use both windows and linux which need to talk to each other. I need a solution that can factor out the operating system into a module and build packages that will work for both the quants and the servers. I don't get to tell my clients what operating systems to use. I must provide solutions that work on whatever they're running.

Re: What is Nix and why you should try it

#59

Post by nextos »

jitl wrote: post #39
gcoda wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my practical reasons I can not use pure GNU distributions, I am not aware of easy community way to re use packages for other distro or something hacky like that. Not everyone have brainpower and time to build custom packages for rare distro, it is a shame, I really like Guix. NixOS got some recepies for using not 100% libre software.

This is also what keeps me away from Guix. I get that there are third-party repos with non-free software, but using a fringe package of a fringe packager is too far for me. There’s no good choice here: Nix package definitions and tools are inscrutable and user-hostile; and the alternative Guix is burden with GNU/free software zealotry and GPL. A somewhat comparable third option is Habitat, from Chef. It also has a pu…

What kind of non-free tools are you missing from Guix?

The only notable omission is linux, as Guix is based on linux-libre instead. But changing this is a matter of 1 LOC.

Re: What is Nix and why you should try it

#60

Post by xelxebar »

jitl wrote: post #7
nextos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think biggest ones are i) nix command is a bit complex, but it's getting redesigned [1] & ii) nixpkg definitions sometimes contain a lot of cruft. I've found Guix and GuixSD, which are a GNU-blessed Guile Scheme-based reimplementation of Nix and NixOS, more aesthetically pleasing. Quite simple and elegant in fact. The major differences are that Guix DSLs are implemented on top of Scheme, whereas Nix uses a custom D…

Guix uses it’s own init system implemented in Scheme: Sheperd ( https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/ ) Herd/Hurd is a kernel, not an init system, although since systemd is Linux only, using a different kernel implies using a non-systemd init system.

Nitpick---but while we're here---Hurd technically refers to the set of (microkernel) servers. The microkernel itself is Mach. In spirit, Mach and the Hurd servers together provide what the Linux kernel provides monolithically.

Anyway... :)

Post reply on HN