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NixOS 26.05

nixos.org

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Re: NixOS 26.05

#91

Post by coffeeindex »

spacington wrote: post #47
chem83 wrote: post #10

NixOS has been my daily driver since 2022/2023 and I have greatly improved the management of my 2 computers and few VMs since. Because of LLMs, I now understand the language much better, but even if I didn't want to write Nix directly, describing the config to AI usually produces good results. The two main sticking points IMO are still: - Development environments are still a pain. devenv.sh is great for web and backe…

Is devens something else than nix shell?

devenv is essentially a convenience wrapper around nix shell with some nice tooling

Re: NixOS 26.05

#92

Post by coffeeindex »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #33
wrxd wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of these commits are to keep packages up to date. Easy to get an incredibly high number of commits when nixpkgs is a monorepo containing the definition of 140000 packages

Good to know. I am entirely against monorepos but in the very specific case of NixOS I get how it can actually make sense.

Anecdote: I was trying out a new editor at some point that had just had a huge update. I installed it on NixOS and noticed the new update had not been pushed onto NixPkgs. I went through their contribution guide and found how to update the package. I opened a PR and immediately a couple previous contributors & a specific maintainer were on the PR and left me some helpful comments and questions and I got it merged a few days later.

And I was someone who hadn’t been active in NixPkgs at all. The community reviewing these small package updates are active and really care which is how the number of commits can explode

Re: NixOS 26.05

#93

Post by ltheanine »

LelouBil wrote: post #14

I would love a Bazzite-style nixos distribution. Like batteries-included for gaming. Is this kind of thing common in the NixOS space ? Like configs you can import that manage 99% of the os for you ?

Not the same thing but you can go in the other direction using https://blue-build.org/reference/recipe/. You can have a nixos-style bazzite distribution where you import the bazzite base image and layer your custom config on top of it.

Re: NixOS 26.05

#94

Post by rgoulter »

shevy-java wrote: post #25

NixOS is a pretty cool idea in theory. In actual practice I found it too complicated to manage. Immutability is kind of cool too, but it creates an obstacle to solving even trivial task in my daily life using Linux. And I don't want to really use such a domain specific language like Nix, for things that really should not need a programming language per se. For instance, I like ruby, but I don't want configuration stu…

> Also, NixOS is not very flexible. I prefer e. g. /Programs/Ruby/4.0.5/

I'd characterise it as the opposite:

A unique aspect of NixOS is that it avoids global state as much as possible (& prefers to symlink things). -- By conspicuously avoiding / preventing this global state, everything has to be declared as an input for the 'package'.

For example: the Nix package for "ruby 4.0.5 built with gcc 16.1" would be a different package than "ruby 4.0.5 built with gcc 16.0". -- That afforts a greater level of flexbility. e.g. allows easily having multiple concurrent shells which run different versions of the same program.

Re: NixOS 26.05

#95

Post by rgoulter »

spacington wrote: post #47
chem83 wrote: post #10

NixOS has been my daily driver since 2022/2023 and I have greatly improved the management of my 2 computers and few VMs since. Because of LLMs, I now understand the language much better, but even if I didn't want to write Nix directly, describing the config to AI usually produces good results. The two main sticking points IMO are still: - Development environments are still a pain. devenv.sh is great for web and backe…

Is devens something else than nix shell?

devenv is really nice.

devenv brings modularity to development shells.

For example, you could configure your devenv module for the shell you want (which env vars you want set, which packages you want available, etc.), and then re-use this module in other shells.

As such, one of the nice things devenv provides is modules with the compilers/lsp/etc. for different languages, so getting a rust environment is about as simple as `languages.rust.enable = true;`.

I haven't explored using the services/processes aspect of it, but it's got support for things like that to. -- I saw it put somewhere: "oh, like docker-compose, but you can compose the configuration".

Re: NixOS 26.05

#96

Post by yomismoaqui »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #87
yomismoaqui wrote: post #7

Let's talk about the important things... how is the drama currently on the Nix community?

15 hours later and noone taking that ragebait, seems healthier than most communities to me as a total outsider.

More of a gossipbait to be honest.

Last time I read about Nix there was a BDFL "assassination" and some people mad about Anduril.

Drama is the salt of opensource, a little bit is always fun.

Re: NixOS 26.05

#98

Post by anon291 »

hju22_-3 wrote: post #90
anon291 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I self host my own stuff in a data center with a bunch of computers. I have a virtualized setup all in nix defining nixos setups for all hosts. Switches are virtualized using open v switch and everything is made so that the nix expression generates a launch script to test the whole set up. Before I deploy I know that all hosts will be able to boot properly from tftp and then communicate and launch kubernetes. I never…

That sounds fascinating. Do you have public facing configuration you would be willing to share? :)

It's a bit messy and gives away too many details of my setup (including IP addresses and such). I'll see if I can eventually release something like it. I've thought of developing a tool that lets you auto-generate network topologies and such. My main use case is testing failovers with switches.

Re: NixOS 26.05

#99

Post by joseda-hg »

Diti wrote: post #72
pmarreck wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It generates a config file. You can read it before applying it. While Nix may be nigh intractable to write for some people, it is quite a bit easier to read , and any shenanigans would immediately be noticed.

Let’s be honest, most people do not review the full output of Claude Code because of slop fatigue.

On NixOS in particular, unless it's something so esoteric that I know it's worth documenting (or so obscure that it's pointless to remember), things tend to be pretty self-descriptive and most changes are relatively small.

I mostly just check the diff, and if nothing looks particularly wrong, I commit it. I mostly care about the final result. Commits are there for eventual auditing, but they're not that important to me.

I (or an LLM) can always clean things up later, and there's plenty of time considering this is the configuration for however many machines I'll be using for the foreseeable future. I used to spend a lot more time tinkering with configs that could be wiped out by a failed Windows Update.

Re: NixOS 26.05

#100

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

tiffanyh wrote: post #34

Why don’t more people use NixOS on servers? Is it because of no LTS? And is having a LTS somewhat the antithesis of what NixOS represents?

> Is it because of no LTS?

Basically, yeah.

A new release every 6 months, and the old release almost immediately stops getting any more updates.

Also, from a vulnerability management perspective, NixOS is terrible. If you have some compliance monkey at your company that demands CVEs get resolved regardless of impact, NixOS is the wrong choice. Yeah, they'll patch CVEs that are truly impacting, but for non-impacting CVEs, they're not nearly as interested at backporting fixes as Debian or Ubuntu. From an actual security standpoint, it's fine, but if compliance requires you to resolve CVEs within a certain period of time, NixOS will fail for you.

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