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NixOS 25.11 released

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Re: NixOS 25.11 released

#21

Post by arianvanp »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #7
dayjah wrote: post #2

I’m about 18mos into managing my macOS hardware with Nix. And I’m conflicted. It’s clearly a powerful system, and I’m still very noob at it. It’s not clear to me that it’s the right solution for macOS. I’ve not felt comfortable enough with it to roll it to Linux hosts yet. Or use its docker image maker. Consistently through the 25.05 period nix-darwin and nixpkgs would fall out of sync. I learned not to `nix flake up…

I'm not conflicted. Nothing compares to nix. I've been using it on macOS, for Linux hosts, for years now, and it's been incredibly rock solid. I stopped using homebrew years ago and I couldn't be happier about that. > Consistently through the 25.05 period nix-darwin and nixpkgs would fall out of sync. I learned not to `nix flake update` too often as a result. I find using a singular nixpkgs version is almost always a…

They do have and apparently the scale of the repo is actively breaking things: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixpkgs-core-team-update-2025-...

Re: NixOS 25.11 released

#22

Post by sestep »

dayjah wrote: post #20
tstrimple wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only barely used Nix on OSX to manage packages and I thought it felt awkward at the time. But I had also barely used NixOS at that time. Today I'm happily running NixOS on my NAS and my "gaming" desktop. My son is running it for his desktop as well. What feels awkward and fragile on OSX is far more stable on NixOS. But you do have to learn some of the Nix syntax and ways of doing things which it sounds like you'…

My principle of adoption was essentially this but in reverse; use it on the system I use the most (macOS), learn, and then use my niche knowledge to apply it to less frequently used computers like my gaming rig. Along the way I acquired enough talent that use at work seemed reasonable. As time has gone on, however, I have found things like the stringent need for everything to be built results in archaic packages vers…

Could you clarify what you mean regarding Zed? I checked just now and it looks like Nixpkgs had the latest version 0.214.7 within 24 hours of its release: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/466449

Re: NixOS 25.11 released

#23

Post by wocram »

digdugdirk wrote: post #14

Does anyone have a good resource for a quickstart/high-level overview of just the terminology required to understand Nix? Flakes/overlays/nixpkgs/etc. I start wading in to try and understand it, and instead run into arguments and disagreements. Unfortunately, without a base level understanding of the entire ecosystem, I stay lost.

Level 1 is using nix to install packages, which you can do by writing a flake like.

The arguments probably come from the fact that flakes are 'experimental', but de facto widely used.

Re: NixOS 25.11 released

#24

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

gouggoug wrote: post #15
dayjah wrote: post #2

I’m about 18mos into managing my macOS hardware with Nix. And I’m conflicted. It’s clearly a powerful system, and I’m still very noob at it. It’s not clear to me that it’s the right solution for macOS. I’ve not felt comfortable enough with it to roll it to Linux hosts yet. Or use its docker image maker. Consistently through the 25.05 period nix-darwin and nixpkgs would fall out of sync. I learned not to `nix flake up…

This past month, I have spent a decent amount of hours (7+) trying to setup nix on my mac with nix-darwin, and failed. Most tutorial out there encourage you to download someone else's configuration to get going. I don't want to do that. I want to understand at its core how this thing works. I've read the official nix language documentation, watched YouTube tutorials, read 3rd party tutorials, and still couldn't get g…

I struggled with this too and it took me a while to accept that there is no right way. There are many ways, and there is a lot of legacy style out there, but ultimately you have to do what works for your own productivity/sanity.

Re: NixOS 25.11 released

#25

Post by kubafu »

This will be another upgrade for my dev machine running NixOS since 17.something times. Thanks to all maintaines and release managers over the years for such solid work!

Re: NixOS 25.11 released

#26

Post by evil-olive »

gouggoug wrote: post #15
dayjah wrote: post #2

I’m about 18mos into managing my macOS hardware with Nix. And I’m conflicted. It’s clearly a powerful system, and I’m still very noob at it. It’s not clear to me that it’s the right solution for macOS. I’ve not felt comfortable enough with it to roll it to Linux hosts yet. Or use its docker image maker. Consistently through the 25.05 period nix-darwin and nixpkgs would fall out of sync. I learned not to `nix flake up…

This past month, I have spent a decent amount of hours (7+) trying to setup nix on my mac with nix-darwin, and failed. Most tutorial out there encourage you to download someone else's configuration to get going. I don't want to do that. I want to understand at its core how this thing works. I've read the official nix language documentation, watched YouTube tutorials, read 3rd party tutorials, and still couldn't get g…

> The nix language is also really unpalatable to me.

yeah, I wish I could give you some "it gets better" good news, but...

I've used NixOS as my daily driver for ~10 years, including the laptop I'm typing this on.

I love NixOS-the-OS, I love nixpkgs-the-ecosystem. but I still hate Nix-the-language.

it's like Perl and Haskell had a drunken hookup that produced a child. and then abandoned that child in the forest where it was raised by wolves and didn't have contact with another human until it was fully grown.

(to answer the inevitable replies, yes I understand functional programming in general, and yes I am aware that Guix exists)

for simple NixOS administration, you can get pretty far with treating configuration.nix as "just" a config file, rather than a program written in a Turing-complete functional language.

writing your own modules or flakes, or re-using flakes published by other people, is strictly optional. make friends with The Big Options Page [0] - anything you find there can be dropped into your configuration.nix without really needing to understand Nix-the-language.

0: https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=25.11

Re: NixOS 25.11 released

#27

Post by undeveloper »

gouggoug wrote: post #15
dayjah wrote: post #2

I’m about 18mos into managing my macOS hardware with Nix. And I’m conflicted. It’s clearly a powerful system, and I’m still very noob at it. It’s not clear to me that it’s the right solution for macOS. I’ve not felt comfortable enough with it to roll it to Linux hosts yet. Or use its docker image maker. Consistently through the 25.05 period nix-darwin and nixpkgs would fall out of sync. I learned not to `nix flake up…

This past month, I have spent a decent amount of hours (7+) trying to setup nix on my mac with nix-darwin, and failed. Most tutorial out there encourage you to download someone else's configuration to get going. I don't want to do that. I want to understand at its core how this thing works. I've read the official nix language documentation, watched YouTube tutorials, read 3rd party tutorials, and still couldn't get g…

you should look into learning how to write modules. nix-darwin at its core is a somewhat underbaked port of nixos to mac OS with the same very useful module system. otherwise look into just getting home-manager working and working your way up.

Re: NixOS 25.11 released

#28

Post by landr0id »

gouggoug wrote: post #15
dayjah wrote: post #2

I’m about 18mos into managing my macOS hardware with Nix. And I’m conflicted. It’s clearly a powerful system, and I’m still very noob at it. It’s not clear to me that it’s the right solution for macOS. I’ve not felt comfortable enough with it to roll it to Linux hosts yet. Or use its docker image maker. Consistently through the 25.05 period nix-darwin and nixpkgs would fall out of sync. I learned not to `nix flake up…

This past month, I have spent a decent amount of hours (7+) trying to setup nix on my mac with nix-darwin, and failed. Most tutorial out there encourage you to download someone else's configuration to get going. I don't want to do that. I want to understand at its core how this thing works. I've read the official nix language documentation, watched YouTube tutorials, read 3rd party tutorials, and still couldn't get g…

I read the same complaint about the language from people I follow who love and actively promote Nix. So it's not just you.

Sorry for adding to your frustration of "just follow what someone else did" but I recently went all-in on managing my Mac (programs, dotfiles, configs, etc) via Nix* when setting up a new machine recently. https://github.com/landaire/config/tree/main/modules

*Nix + homebrew, mostly because Homebrew packages more macOS applications.

Re: NixOS 25.11 released

#29

Post by dayjah »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #7
dayjah wrote: post #2

I’m about 18mos into managing my macOS hardware with Nix. And I’m conflicted. It’s clearly a powerful system, and I’m still very noob at it. It’s not clear to me that it’s the right solution for macOS. I’ve not felt comfortable enough with it to roll it to Linux hosts yet. Or use its docker image maker. Consistently through the 25.05 period nix-darwin and nixpkgs would fall out of sync. I learned not to `nix flake up…

I'm not conflicted. Nothing compares to nix. I've been using it on macOS, for Linux hosts, for years now, and it's been incredibly rock solid. I stopped using homebrew years ago and I couldn't be happier about that. > Consistently through the 25.05 period nix-darwin and nixpkgs would fall out of sync. I learned not to `nix flake update` too often as a result. I find using a singular nixpkgs version is almost always a…

This is all great feedback, thanks!

I got here through devenv, I was fully bought in on its proposal and once I found its edges I started peeking under the covers to understand how it worked.

At that point I was pretty deep in mise for everything that wasn’t using devenv. This perhaps help frame why I see them solving the same problem.

I definitely had my “aha!” and ditched mise because nix seemed it had solved my problems. But now, in a new gig, I’m running into lots of edge cases that mise could solve at the drop of a hat and nix (/ my poor understanding of the fundamentals) struggles with.

So, with that all said, I suppose my point is that you get a lot of overlap between the two, and mise is easier to use and get buy-in on. There are certainly elements I find appealing about nix which mise doesn’t touch (promise of repeatable builds, the entire package ecosystem, etc), however.

Re: NixOS 25.11 released

#30

Post by dayjah »

sestep wrote: post #22
dayjah wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My principle of adoption was essentially this but in reverse; use it on the system I use the most (macOS), learn, and then use my niche knowledge to apply it to less frequently used computers like my gaming rig. Along the way I acquired enough talent that use at work seemed reasonable. As time has gone on, however, I have found things like the stringent need for everything to be built results in archaic packages vers…

Could you clarify what you mean regarding Zed? I checked just now and it looks like Nixpkgs had the latest version 0.214.7 within 24 hours of its release: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/466449

That’s great to know! There are plenty of issues which are reasonably well documented in the zed repo.

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/26277

About 4mos ago I moved to using brew for zed because at the time there was some hard block on updating rustc in nixpkgs-stable to a version which included some feature that zed relied upon.

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