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My First Impressions of Nix

mtlynch.io

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Re: My First Impressions of Nix

#11

Post by hamandcheese »

nittanymount wrote: post #6

planning to learn/use ansible, wonder if Nix is ready to use ? have most functions/features ?

If you can adopt NixOS, then it's worth considering. But if you have to use a standard distro then Nix on its own won't solve your configuration-management problems.

To sum it up succinctly, I would say that Nix helps you manage $PATH while NixOS helps you manage /etc.

Re: My First Impressions of Nix

#12

Post by throwaway6835-8 »

nittanymount wrote: post #6

planning to learn/use ansible, wonder if Nix is ready to use ? have most functions/features ?

Go with Ansible unless you want to fully dedicate into Nix ecosystem and spend a lot of time learning it (and it's not easy, for example because of lacking documentation). Also Ansible is something you more often find in actual projects/workplace.

Re: My First Impressions of Nix

#13

Post by p-e-w »

I've occasionally encountered projects using Nix, and I've casually browsed the Nix and NixOS websites, but I still don't have a clear idea of what Nix is.

Is it a package manager? A build system? An operating system? A container platform? A sandbox? An automation tool?

Which widely used, existing software tools is it analogous to?

Re: My First Impressions of Nix

#16

Post by hardware2win »

hamandcheese wrote: post #8

> Nix, on the other hand, does have a concept of state. If you make a one-line change to a 200-line Nix configuration, it doesn’t have to re-do all the work from the other 199 lines. It can evaluate the state of the system against the configuration file and recognize that it just has to apply the one-line change. And that change usually happens in a few seconds. The author seems to have some misguided ideas about Nix…

Functional?

Re: My First Impressions of Nix

#17

Post by seqizz »

p-e-w wrote: post #13

I've occasionally encountered projects using Nix, and I've casually browsed the Nix and NixOS websites, but I still don't have a clear idea of what Nix is. Is it a package manager? A build system? An operating system? A container platform? A sandbox? An automation tool? Which widely used, existing software tools is it analogous to?

Afaiu it's trying to become all. Nix is on core, you can get packages from nixpkgs / write your own definitions, use it on OS configurations via NixOS, use its built-in helpers to run your containers with it, make a whole CI and cache it with the help of Hydra etc.

Re: My First Impressions of Nix

#18

Post by seqizz »

wesapien wrote: post #14

Does anyone have any ideas on what the most likely outcome would be for NixOS losing the S3 bucket funding?

As far as I remember there was enough money to keep them alive on current setting about a year. Worst case they'll switch to an alternative provider which _might_ be a bit slower?

Re: My First Impressions of Nix

#20

Post by WJW »

wesapien wrote: post #14

Does anyone have any ideas on what the most likely outcome would be for NixOS losing the S3 bucket funding?

IMO, one of the budget storage companies (Backblaze, Storj, etc) and/or a CDN stepping up to support it out of their marketing budget.
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