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

Here's a part of my other comment because the docs are horrible:

It's just a list of packages, and an optional flake to control the repositories (stable/unstable) and add packages from outside of the official ones.

To update everything nix related I just run:

cd ~/dotfiles/nix/ && nix flake update && home-manager switch

It took me days to get to that point simply because you need to trawl through outdated and nixos resources. Those examples + home-manager manual will get you going in 10 minutes.

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

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