I wonder if Nix is finally OK to use with LLMs. Used to be such a pain and just hours of googling to make simple things work. I think even ChatGPT didn't work well at the time for me, but now at least the try-and-fail can be done by the LLM itself.
NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop
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Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop
#12The author mentions it in the conclusion, but I think "nix package manager on non-NixOS Linux" would be the best of both worlds. You'd avoid the friction of having to deal with software that doesn't 'just work' on NixOS, but still be able to make use of things like devenv. Though, an understated benefit from using NixOS is that the specific fixes taken are now available "as code".
You could take a look at guix [1], it's very much like nix, but is available as a package manager for other distros. [1] https://guix.gnu.org/
Does it allow you to install/run graphical apps that require GPU access? That's my biggest annoyance right now with using Nix packages on my Debian (stable) system, they just don't work for everything.
Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop
#13The author mentions it in the conclusion, but I think "nix package manager on non-NixOS Linux" would be the best of both worlds. You'd avoid the friction of having to deal with software that doesn't 'just work' on NixOS, but still be able to make use of things like devenv. Though, an understated benefit from using NixOS is that the specific fixes taken are now available "as code".
You could take a look at guix [1], it's very much like nix, but is available as a package manager for other distros. [1] https://guix.gnu.org/
Nobody switched to Guix for easier driver support lol
Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop
#14The author mentions it in the conclusion, but I think "nix package manager on non-NixOS Linux" would be the best of both worlds. You'd avoid the friction of having to deal with software that doesn't 'just work' on NixOS, but still be able to make use of things like devenv. Though, an understated benefit from using NixOS is that the specific fixes taken are now available "as code".
The whole point of NixOS is to make packages a special case of configuration. Running nix elsewhere doesn't do that and for configuration there are more mature tools. It would be like using Ansible(/Salt/Puppet or other similar tools) without any of the upside those have. Don't be afraid to use those tools though, they're great.
That is the whole point of NixOS, but NixOS is not the whole point of Nix.
I personally think these issues sound one-off to me, and sticking with NixOS should be fine. But other OS + home manager is completely valid and a great way to use Nix more casually.
Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop
#15I'm traveling for the next couple weeks and don't want to take my home or work laptop, so I'm setting up a nice, old Chromebook with NixOS. I've dabbled with NixOS before. But this time I have been using Claude Code to set it up, and it's really good at it. Makes it painless, even without being very experienced with NixOS.
Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop
#16I wonder if Nix is finally OK to use with LLMs. Used to be such a pain and just hours of googling to make simple things work. I think even ChatGPT didn't work well at the time for me, but now at least the try-and-fail can be done by the LLM itself.
Did the switch to NixOS a few months ago on my Thinkpad and ChatGPT worked wonders. I'm not very experienced with Linux distros and have been an Ubuntu user for a long time. I don't think I'll be switching away from NixOS anytime soon, it's great.
The learning curve is still extremely steep but after the initial 10 hours of googling it just all falls into place.
Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop
#17I wonder if Nix is finally OK to use with LLMs. Used to be such a pain and just hours of googling to make simple things work. I think even ChatGPT didn't work well at the time for me, but now at least the try-and-fail can be done by the LLM itself.
I’ve found much success using the most recent LLMs (mostly ones trained on 2024 data) for configuring nixos. It’s even pretty good at flake workflows as well!
Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop
#18I wonder if Nix is finally OK to use with LLMs. Used to be such a pain and just hours of googling to make simple things work. I think even ChatGPT didn't work well at the time for me, but now at least the try-and-fail can be done by the LLM itself.
Nix is fantastic with Claude Sonnet.
Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop
#19Interesting to see someone writing a blog post and explaining issues they've encountered with their laptop, I participate in the official repository of Nix configurations covering these kinds of hardware quirks [1]. I also have a InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen 9 (Intel Version) and began adding support for this laptop in NixOS Hardware in early March of this year, including settings sane defaults, loading drivers, and even…
Great work! I love that NixOS makes encoding these settings so easy. 'Sadly', my T14 Gen 5 AMD worked out of the box with NixOS, so nothing to contribute :). (I see that this model is in the repo with minimal configuration.)
Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could take a look at guix [1], it's very much like nix, but is available as a package manager for other distros. [1] https://guix.gnu.org/
Does it allow you to install/run graphical apps that require GPU access? That's my biggest annoyance right now with using Nix packages on my Debian (stable) system, they just don't work for everything.
You can often set up /run/opengl-driver to mirror NixOS and it will work. For instance for CUDA:
https://danieldk.eu/Nix-CUDA-on-non-NixOS-systems#make-runop...