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

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[-] ChonkaLoo@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Was curious myself don't like flatpaks & appimages much, but from a quick googling, they don't seem to integrate with the desktop so you need to launch them from terminal? That is a deal breaker for me at least.

[-] clemdemort@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

you have to set up the XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable to take into account ~/.nix-profile/share the desktop icons will only appear after a relogin though.

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

It's automatically set up alongside PATH

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

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