The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded • Hacker News Board

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#21

Post by ButlerianJihad » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:17 AM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #20

There was a sweet spot in like 2024 when it seemed like everything was possible with Nix, but now it seems like everything “experimental” is permanently so (like flakes), packages I care about are not as fresh as I want, I have no mental recall for Nix commands… Meanwhile, my company is using Nix for everything heavily internally. Everyone gets their dependencies via Nix unless you are like using PAM or something. Re…

Welcome to zombocom

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#22

Post by Larrikin » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:17 AM UTC

Nix sounded great, but actually trying to use it for personal use felt like a constant time sink. LLMs made it seem like their bespoke language could be side stepped and one could get all the benefits of the ideas without the time sink. But now they have drama, so I hope someone runs with the idea but for humans and possibly LLMs.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#23

Post by talentedcoin » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:17 AM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #20

There was a sweet spot in like 2024 when it seemed like everything was possible with Nix, but now it seems like everything “experimental” is permanently so (like flakes), packages I care about are not as fresh as I want, I have no mental recall for Nix commands… Meanwhile, my company is using Nix for everything heavily internally. Everyone gets their dependencies via Nix unless you are like using PAM or something. Re…

This resonates with me as well. I was really into using Nix for awhile but it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth for a solo dev.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#24

Post by CuriouslyC » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:19 AM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #20

There was a sweet spot in like 2024 when it seemed like everything was possible with Nix, but now it seems like everything “experimental” is permanently so (like flakes), packages I care about are not as fresh as I want, I have no mental recall for Nix commands… Meanwhile, my company is using Nix for everything heavily internally. Everyone gets their dependencies via Nix unless you are like using PAM or something. Re…

Agents are getting pretty good at Nix. I think it has sufficient critical mass that it'll be fine.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#25

Post by soupbowl » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:20 AM UTC

After being a heavy user of NixOS, I quit using it due to the communities instability, I don't trust it.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#26

Post by supriyo-biswas » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:20 AM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #20

There was a sweet spot in like 2024 when it seemed like everything was possible with Nix, but now it seems like everything “experimental” is permanently so (like flakes), packages I care about are not as fresh as I want, I have no mental recall for Nix commands… Meanwhile, my company is using Nix for everything heavily internally. Everyone gets their dependencies via Nix unless you are like using PAM or something. Re…

Is it really that complicated? I personally use direnv with nix to have per-project dependency versions installed automatically, and I’ve never had too much trouble. I know that the flake.nix files can become somewhat complicated, but mine have been pretty simple thus far.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#27

Post by metadat » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:23 AM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #20

There was a sweet spot in like 2024 when it seemed like everything was possible with Nix, but now it seems like everything “experimental” is permanently so (like flakes), packages I care about are not as fresh as I want, I have no mental recall for Nix commands… Meanwhile, my company is using Nix for everything heavily internally. Everyone gets their dependencies via Nix unless you are like using PAM or something. Re…

What is PAM in this context?

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#28

Post by hibikir » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:23 AM UTC

talentedcoin wrote: post #23

klodolph wrote: post #20

There was a sweet spot in like 2024 when it seemed like everything was possible with Nix, but now it seems like everything “experimental” is permanently so (like flakes), packages I care about are not as fresh as I want, I have no mental recall for Nix commands… Meanwhile, my company is using Nix for everything heavily internally. Everyone gets their dependencies via Nix unless you are like using PAM or something. Re…

This resonates with me as well. I was really into using Nix for awhile but it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth for a solo dev.

It gets worse when you are not a solo dev, and there's sufficient variety on people's setups. Oops, someone updated a version, and then built things for just their processor, and now I am stuck in a 20 minute compilation loop because some bad pin. Debugging Nix problems like those makes me think that old Gentoo Linux back in 2005 was easy and user friendly.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#29

Post by klodolph » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:24 AM UTC

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #26

klodolph wrote: post #20

There was a sweet spot in like 2024 when it seemed like everything was possible with Nix, but now it seems like everything “experimental” is permanently so (like flakes), packages I care about are not as fresh as I want, I have no mental recall for Nix commands… Meanwhile, my company is using Nix for everything heavily internally. Everyone gets their dependencies via Nix unless you are like using PAM or something. Re…

Is it really that complicated? I personally use direnv with nix to have per-project dependency versions installed automatically, and I’ve never had too much trouble. I know that the flake.nix files can become somewhat complicated, but mine have been pretty simple thus far.

I didn’t use the word “complicated”, maybe I’m missing something, but I listed some specific complaints and “Nix is complicated” wasn’t on the list.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#30

Post by tkel » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:24 AM UTC

talentedcoin wrote: post #7

Why is the Nix community such a dumpster fire?

If you've been part of an organization or a community that has undergone a big conflict or a schism, you'd understand. Plus this community largely communicates exclusively over text, which doesn't really work well for community repair. It's difficult to get people to feel OK with each other, or spend time together not arguing, when they only ever write intense letters to each other. Plus social work with technical people that spend most of their lives looking at a computer, not interacting with people face-to-face, does not exactly lend itself to socio-emotional maturity. Seems like in the case of Nix, the more mature people have repeatedly gotten burned out trying to tend to the mess and create a healthy community. It's extremely difficult to get someone to be humble, listen, reflect, and grow, when they are already upset and have their defenses up. And without our normal human tools or other trusted peers to help, like we can call on in real life, it can sometimes be near impossible.

Plus, in our highly individualized and hierarchical society, people don't have a lot of practice making decisions democratically, or coming to a consensus with people they disagree with. "Group projects" in grade school is pretty much the only time this happens during our socialization, which is incredibly sparse and inadequate. Anthropologically speaking, we should be doing this nearly every day.