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00 Nix & NixOS

Tutorials

On MacOS

https://blog.6nok.org/how-i-use-nix-on-macos/

Flakes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw4wJjjQYMU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3VBi6kHw5c

For devops / CD

https://lewo.abesis.fr/posts/from-push-to-pull-deployment/

Evangelisation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwfKlX3rA6E “One day, as happens now and then with a bleeding-edge rolling release distro, a systemd update reversed my mouse buttons. The great thing about rolling-release and cutting-edge distributions like Arch Linux, is that you get to be a beta tester, whether you like it or not! I thought this was the way it had to be on Linux: Stability or cutting-edge features, not both. But that wasn’t right at all, with NixOS you can have everything, everywhere all at once!”

Short and convincing piece of Nix propaganda: https://maych.in/blog/its-time-to-give-nix-a-chanc
e/
Recommends:
- Nix Pills - Explains what Nix is in brief
- NixOS & Flakes Book - A good starting point to understand more about Nix Flakes
- nix.dev - Official Nix Documentation
- NixOS Wiki - Wiki for Nix and NixOS-related stuff
- Noogle - Google, but for Nix functions
- NixOS Search - Search packages in the official nixpkgs repository
- Zero to Nix - A general guide for Nix and Flakes

Comments

  • https://lwn.net/Articles/962788/ “A look at Nix and Guix”
  • https://www.dgt.is/blog/2025-01-10-nix-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/ “Nix - Death by a thousand cuts”
    • The author, a seasoned software engineer with extensive Linux experience, details their two-year journey using NixOS as their primary operating system. They praise Nix’s declarative configuration, reproducibility, easy service management, and ephemeral development shells. However, they ultimately conclude that NixOS, in its current state (2025), is not recommended for desktop use, even for experienced Linux users. The author highlights issues such as the complexity of the Nix language, inconsistent package quality and documentation, resource usage, and a fragmented workflow due to multiple ways of achieving the same task. They also describe numerous specific problems encountered with desktop integration, ZFS setup, symbolic links, development tools like npm and Conda, and various applications. Despite appreciating Nix’s potential and the helpful community, the author decides to scale back their NixOS usage, citing the constant need for troubleshooting and the feeling of being stuck in “Nix Purgatory” – aware of Nix’s benefits but burdened by its complexities.
    • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42666851 HN comments on the previous post
  • https://rasmuskirk.com/articles/2024-07-24_dont-use-nixos/ “Don’t use NixOS” (but use Nix)
    • “The author argues against treating NixOS as “just another distro” due to its steep learning curve, instead presenting Nix as a versatile, incremental tool for software reproducibility. Recounting a personal journey from Arch to a challenging NixOS experience, then to PopOS, the author ultimately found a sweet spot by using Nix (specifically Home Manager) on top of a traditional distro. This approach provided the desired declarative, reproducible user environment and dotfile management across multiple machines without the full commitment and complexity of NixOS for daily desktop use. While still endorsing NixOS for specific scenarios like servers (as used on their Raspberry Pi NAS), the author’s main advice is to start with Nix at its lower levels of functionality (package management, build environments) rather than diving directly into full NixOS, summarizing it as: “don’t use NixOS, use Nix.”“
  • https://aruarian.dance/blog/you-do-not-need-nixos/?utm_source=pocket_shared “You do not need NixOS” (on the Desktop - still recommends it on servers)
    • “The author recounts their experience with NixOS, a Linux distribution famed for its promise of a perfectly reproducible and declaratively configured system. While initially captivated by this idea, a year of practical use on their Framework laptop revealed significant drawbacks: a steep learning curve, opaque errors, and difficulties setting up development environments without cluttering projects. Ultimately, the author found the constant need to manage and configure the entire system overly burdensome for daily desktop use, leading them to switch to Fedora Silverblue-based immutable distros like Bazzite and Bluefin. These alternatives, utilizing Flatpaks, Homebrew, and Distrobox, offered a better balance of stability and ease of use, aligning with the author’s desire for an OS that “just works” and doesn’t require deep system-level involvement. However, they acknowledge NixOS’s strengths and suitability for server environments, where its reproducibility and declarative nature are highly beneficial.”
    • In fine, recommends Bluefin - based on the immutable Fedora Silverblue.

Tools

References

Meta

Nix tutorials / intros

Nixpkgs

NixOS

Flakes

Nickel

Blogs

#nix #nixpkgs #docker

Page last modified: 2025-05-27 16:58:29