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NixOS 22.11 “Raccoon”

nixos.org

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Re: NixOS 22.11 “Raccoon”

#31

Post by preisschild »

aliqot wrote: post #23
codedokode wrote: post #5

I might want to try some new Linux distribution so I wonder: what doesn't work in nix? What are its weaknesses? What about devices with non-free firmware?

If you just want someone to shoot you straight: Documentation and naming conventions for Nix are absolute shit across the board. This will get downvotes, and people will say I'm wrong, but I'm 100% right. Go see yourself, it's bad. Language is called Nix, OS is actually called Nix, package manager is called Nix, just the whole thing seems like it was written in 1 week by a squirrel with 12 hands and a sack of ritalin…

> OS is actually called Nix

Not true. The distro is called `NixOS`. The package manager and it's language is called `Nix`.

I do agree that the learning curve is extremely steep.

Re: NixOS 22.11 “Raccoon”

#32

Post by Asdrubalini »

rb2k_ wrote: post #25
Asdrubalini wrote: post #17

My router (a VM with passed through network card) is currently running on NixOS, I’m really happy so far, it makes kernel patching (which in my case is required for the nic to work properly at 2500BASE-T) much easier than manually patching and building the kernel every time. It also gives me the guarantee that I will be able to rebuild the exact same host almost bit by bit in the future, in case of necessity, which i…

Did you base your router config on some existing template or did you just built it up from scratch?

I based much of the configuration on [1] but I took the nftables rules from the official nftables wiki.

[1] https://francis.begyn.be/blog/nixos-home-router

Re: NixOS 22.11 “Raccoon”

#33

Post by preisschild »

codedokode wrote: post #30
_piif wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- You will have to learn both the nix language and working with nixpkgs. Learning nix is pretty trivial IMO (great resources are nix-1p[0] and Nix Pills[1]) but the documentation, while vast, is pretty shallow at the moment. You will likely have to resort to reading random blog posts, nix configs published by others and the source code of nixpkgs itself. - As mentioned by another commenter you will not be able to run…

> learn both the nix language That seems weird to me. I don't have to learn package configuration language in other distributions. I thought that one could just install packages with a package manager. > You can use nix-alien[2] which will automatically fetch the required libraries and build an FHS shell for the binary. That's actually fine. I want to put closed source software into a chroot anyway.

> That seems weird to me. I don't have to learn package configuration language in other distributions. I thought that one could just install packages with a package manager.

NixOS is more like a distro bundled with Ansible, so you can describe your entire system as code.

Re: NixOS 22.11 “Raccoon”

#34

Post by pca006132 »

My experience with NixOS: Package installation is usually just from the official channel, system options can usually be done with `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix` and home-manager.

Major problems: installing niche proprietary software that you may have to package yourself, and fighting Nix for languages with package manager, e.g. Python, which frequently uses packages not in nixpkgs.

Re: NixOS 22.11 “Raccoon”

#35

Post by jauco »

codedokode wrote: post #30
_piif wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- You will have to learn both the nix language and working with nixpkgs. Learning nix is pretty trivial IMO (great resources are nix-1p[0] and Nix Pills[1]) but the documentation, while vast, is pretty shallow at the moment. You will likely have to resort to reading random blog posts, nix configs published by others and the source code of nixpkgs itself. - As mentioned by another commenter you will not be able to run…

> learn both the nix language That seems weird to me. I don't have to learn package configuration language in other distributions. I thought that one could just install packages with a package manager. > You can use nix-alien[2] which will automatically fetch the required libraries and build an FHS shell for the binary. That's actually fine. I want to put closed source software into a chroot anyway.

If you want to run nixos (i.e. the linux distro) then the configuration file is written in the nix language. Given that you’ll have to configure your installation, you’ll have to learn the nix language

If you just want to use nix for packages, you can run any distro and install nix the package manager into it. This is a good way to dip your toes in the water. And in that case you can just use the cli commands for installing packages.

Re: NixOS 22.11 “Raccoon”

#36

Post by rnhmjoj »

justoreply wrote: post #7
codedokode wrote: post #5

I might want to try some new Linux distribution so I wonder: what doesn't work in nix? What are its weaknesses? What about devices with non-free firmware?

you can't run binaries built for other distributions, without patching them

Not true: there are many tools that allows directly running any binary, like nix-autobahn [1].

[1]: https://github.com/Lassulus/nix-autobahn

Re: NixOS 22.11 “Raccoon”

#37

Post by speed_spread »

codedokode wrote: post #5

I might want to try some new Linux distribution so I wonder: what doesn't work in nix? What are its weaknesses? What about devices with non-free firmware?

If Nix is too much but you still want an immutable distro, look into Fedora Silverblue (or Kinoite). It offers some of the advantages of Nix in a more approachable fashion.

Re: NixOS 22.11 “Raccoon”

#38

Post by tomrod »

preisschild wrote: post #31
aliqot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you just want someone to shoot you straight: Documentation and naming conventions for Nix are absolute shit across the board. This will get downvotes, and people will say I'm wrong, but I'm 100% right. Go see yourself, it's bad. Language is called Nix, OS is actually called Nix, package manager is called Nix, just the whole thing seems like it was written in 1 week by a squirrel with 12 hands and a sack of ritalin…

> OS is actually called Nix Not true. The distro is called `NixOS`. The package manager and it's language is called `Nix`. I do agree that the learning curve is extremely steep.

That's not a learning curve, that's a brick wall.

Maybe call the package manager something catchy like "pacman" or "update_software_from_repos" :)

Re: NixOS 22.11 “Raccoon”

#39

Post by tomrod »

bsnnkv wrote: post #26
aliqot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you just want someone to shoot you straight: Documentation and naming conventions for Nix are absolute shit across the board. This will get downvotes, and people will say I'm wrong, but I'm 100% right. Go see yourself, it's bad. Language is called Nix, OS is actually called Nix, package manager is called Nix, just the whole thing seems like it was written in 1 week by a squirrel with 12 hands and a sack of ritalin…

That last sentence is so true. I'm all in on Nix and I couldn't elevator pitch it if my life depended on it.

Completely repeatable setup.

Like Docker, but works.

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