128
Why aren't more people using NixPKGs? (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago by clemdemort@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
128 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Distro agnostic packages like flatpaks and appimages have become extremely popular over the past few years, yet they seem to get a lot of dirt thrown on them because they are super bloated (since they bring all their dependencies with them).

NixPkgs are also distro agnostic, but they are about as light as regular system packages (.deb/.rpm/.PKG) all the while having an impressive 80 000 packages in their repos.

I don't get why more people aren't using them, sure they do need some tweaking but so do flatpaks, my main theory is that there are no graphical installer for them and the CLI installer is lacking (no progress bar, no ETA, strange syntax) I'm also scared that there is a downside to them I dont know about.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] matejc@matejc.com 2 points 10 months ago

Dont know where you are getting this. Nixpkgs is a breeze to manage compared to apt repo. Also it does not matter if you are on nixos or non-nixos system, the only difference is that nix does not take care of services on its own. What kind of docs do you miss? Nix has its own extensive nix docs page, and for packaging you also have nixpkgs documentation page - also official and not much related to nixos itself. Also nix has quite good man pages.

[-] neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space 2 points 10 months ago

I'm not saying it's not easy, I'm saying there's not really any documentation about it.

I had to figure out for myself that I needed to do symlinks to get menu entries for nix packages

[-] Shareni@programming.dev 0 points 10 months ago

I had to figure out for myself that I needed to do symlinks to get menu entries for nix packages

Home-manager: I didn't have to touch anything to get PATH and XDG working, it's all automated.

[-] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 3 points 10 months ago

But you don't get hardware graphics acceleration unless you use nixgl, and if you want to integrate it into home manager that breaks XDG entries, which I never figured out.

Also, you are illustrating the point of the commenter you replied to: nowhere on the official docs does it recommend home manager for non nixos systems, at least not when i was scrolling through them. I learned about home manager, nixgl, and the like via forum posts, either by finding them via a web search, or by asking myself.

For example, I only found code to integrate home manager with nixgl on the nixos discourse.

[-] Shareni@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

For example, I only found code to integrate home manager with nixgl on the nixos discourse.

Could you please share some examples? I tried searching the forum for it, but no luck.

[-] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Did some searching, also can't find the original forum post lol.

https://github.com/nix-community/nixGL/issues/114#issuecomment-1585323281

and this: https://pmiddend.github.io/posts/nixgl-on-ubuntu/

The latter looks like what I originally used, but what I originally used broke the generated application menu entries.

[-] Shareni@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

But you don’t get hardware graphics acceleration unless you use nixgl, and if you want to integrate it into home manager that breaks XDG entries, which I never figured out.

Thanks, I didn't know that.

Also, you are illustrating the point of the commenter you replied to

Oh yeah, this is a part of my reply to the OP:

The documentation is abysmal. I spent days trying to figure out how to use nix as a declarative package manager before I accidentally came across home-manager. Even the manual leads you down the wrong path. A quick start guide with a few examples for home-manager and flakes, and a few basic commands, would've had me going in 5 minutes. That problem is made worse by the fact that almost all sources of info focus on nixos instead.

[-] neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space 1 points 10 months ago

And where in the documentation is that?

[-] Shareni@programming.dev 2 points 10 months ago

Nix docs are hot garbage, but I'm pretty sure it tells you to reboot when you finish installing either nix or home-manager. It didn't appear to me in a dream.

[-] neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space 1 points 10 months ago

to clarify, i was talking about home-manager

this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
128 points (93.8% liked)

Linux

48740 readers
1701 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
nooter692@lemmy.ml
MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz