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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.

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Why aren't more people using NixPKGs? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (8 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

And where in the documentation is that?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

to clarify, i was talking about home-manager

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