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NixOS 26.05

nixos.org

11–20 of 106 posts

Re: NixOS 26.05

#11
> Deprecation of x86_64-darwin

Understandable with Apple dropping official support but kind of sad as they were selling Intel powered Macs until as recently as 2023 and with Tahoe still continuing to receive security updates until 2028.

How is NixOS on Intel Macs currently? Hopefully Linux can still breathe life into these computers in 10 years time.

Re: NixOS 26.05

#12
post #3

After using NixOS for a bit and eventually learning to rely on it, life without it seems inconceivably complex

I love the slightly weird learning curve on NixOS where initially it seems incredibly complex writing this weird functional programming language for every change you want to apply to your system, then over time it clicks and you end up in a place where any operating system that doesn't define everything in a weird functional programming language seems incredibly complex. I read blog posts about doing things on other distros now and I'm left thinking that an 800 word set of instructions would be 25 lines of Nix expressions.

Re: NixOS 26.05

#13
post #5

I had quite a rollercoaster going from Windows 10 to Arch to Windows and then settling on NixOS. Main reason being able to do clean package/program setup and centralize, version-control my configuration. My main issue with Arch was that after installing and trying stuff it left OS dirty even after package removal. This might be because I had some things built and installed through AUR (e.g. latest mpv releases that s…

https://github.com/CyberShadow/aconfmgr

Aconfmgr is a good solution (practical trade-off for me). When it feel like "my OS must be dirty at this point", then I spend a couple minutes with this and I'm back to the clean state.

I don't do this more then twice a year, so if you insist on an always clean system, YMMV

Re: NixOS 26.05

#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 ?

Re: NixOS 26.05

#15
post #5

I had quite a rollercoaster going from Windows 10 to Arch to Windows and then settling on NixOS. Main reason being able to do clean package/program setup and centralize, version-control my configuration. My main issue with Arch was that after installing and trying stuff it left OS dirty even after package removal. This might be because I had some things built and installed through AUR (e.g. latest mpv releases that s…

I also really like that Nix (both on NixOS or as a package manager for Linux/macOS) can temporarily fetch packages with `nix shell` removing entirely the need to install something I am just trying out or something I know I am not going to need on a regular basis.

Similarly the integration of flakes/devshells and direnv is great to create reproducible development environments. Everything I need and at the correct versions are automatically setup as soon as I `cd` into a project directory.

Re: NixOS 26.05

#16
I switched my workstation over to NixOS ~6 weeks ago and it's been really good, I'm a total convert. The thing that really got me over the hump was entirely configuring it using Claude Code.

One unexpected benefit is that both my workstation and my backup laptop have the same setup, so I can run updates on the scratch box before doing my workstation. I decided to run the "latest" rather than 25.11 release, so it's nice to test before I apply (I hit a GDM issue a few weeks ago that left me at a black screen; but not a huge deal, just select the "previous" option in the grub screen).

I've got everything to parity with what I had on my previous Ubuntu workstation. I had anticipated issues with some software that isn't packaged (but NixOS packages a LOT), but that wasn't an issue. Claude was able to do all those things no problem.

The biggest tricky bit was with my vim setup; I've been using AstroVIM and trying to get away from managing my own vim setup. You can't, AFAICT, just apply astrovim in NixOS. So I described the vim setup I wanted to Claude Code, and I now have a ~700 line config that implements everything I wanted: LSP, TreeSitter, a small variety of other things. Unlike Astro/Lunar, where tweaks you want to make are buried in some set of files in this whole giant distro, it is all encoded in this one "neovim.nix" file.

I also set up home-manager and SOPS and so far that has been working just great! I now have home directory settings that are replicated across 2 machines.

I'm still really only using it on one machine, so we'll see how it gets more complicated if I start running it on some servers.

Re: NixOS 26.05

#17
> The 26.05 release was made possible due to the efforts of 2842 contributors, who authored 59703 commits since the previous release.

Maybe they should think about increasing their release cycle, that sounds completely unmanageable.

After 10 years in my company I have around 1,500 commits in total, it would take me 390 years to author 60K.

Re: NixOS 26.05

#18
post #3

After using NixOS for a bit and eventually learning to rely on it, life without it seems inconceivably complex

I love the slightly weird learning curve on NixOS where initially it seems incredibly complex writing this weird functional programming language for every change you want to apply to your system, then over time it clicks and you end up in a place where any operating system that doesn't define everything in a weird functional programming language seems incredibly complex. I read blog posts about doing things on other…

yes, exactly!

Re: NixOS 26.05

#19

> Deprecation of x86_64-darwin Understandable with Apple dropping official support but kind of sad as they were selling Intel powered Macs until as recently as 2023 and with Tahoe still continuing to receive security updates until 2028. How is NixOS on Intel Macs currently? Hopefully Linux can still breathe life into these computers in 10 years time.

I have NixOS installed on a 2009 MacBook Pro and it works well enough every time I pick it up.

I'm probably also going to install it on a 2019 iMac once macOS stops getting security updates but I haven't tried it yet.

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