NixOS 23.11 released
NixOS 23.11 released
Nix is a tool that takes a unique approach to package management and system configuration. Learn how to make reproducible, declarative and reliable systems.
Seeing this prompted me to do an experiment.
There was a time when Nixpkgs was smaller than the AUR. And, until recently, Nixpkgs was larger than the AUR but still smaller than the combination of the main Arch repos with the AUR.
As it turns out, the current total package count for Arch and the AUR is 85,819.
For nixpkgs unstable, that number is 88,768.
NixOS 23.05 Stable has 83,740.
And considering the mention of 9,147 new packages and 4,015 removed packages, that would mean that 23.11 would have a total of:
88,872 packages. This is more than the current figures for Nixpkgs unstable, but this is going off data from separate sources (NixOS devs and repology, with repology still being slightly outdated)
And, as such, I think it's fair to say the winner is (drumroll please)....
The USER for having such incredible distributions, giving him the vast breadth of choice for what distro matches their workflow best.
Gender neutral him moment
Permanently Deleted
To be fair, the level of support for packages in nixpkgs is inconsistent. My config has a number of backported packages overlaid on top of nixpkgs where upstream is not up to date enough for me.
Package count is interesting to look at, but it doesn't really give a good picture of software availability. Distributions will split or combine packages differently. For example, the AUR has both binaries and source versions available for many packages.
There may be more but that doesn't mean that every Arch package is available on Nix
There is also nur (nix user repositories) which i think is more like AUR.
In my 4 years of intensively using Nix/NixOS, I've never used the NUR. I wouldn't know what for tbh. as it's easier for everyone to have things in Nixpkgs instead.
Wallpaper:
Does Nix need user namespaces, and does it allow good Sandboxing like Podman or Flatpak?
No idea, I use Gentoo
I'm new to NixOS. Do I have to do anything extra to update NixOS? Or do I just update my flake and run nixos-rebuild switch --flake like I normally do to update packages?
If you are using flakes you should check your flakes' inputs (probably the one called
nixpkgs) and then change the URL to match the channel for 23.11. Finally, you should of course rebuild your system.You need to update your inputs so that you're using the
23.11branch of nixpkgs instead of the old one. In my experience, a couple of things will break, but there's usually warnings about it.
Okay, folks. NixOS needs your help. No bull. I'm talking documenters, designers, coders, package maintainers. Why? Because the NixOS community has a lot on it's plate right now.
Like I can understand why flakes haven't become standardised, why it's still marked as unstable, even though it's pretty much feature complete, and that's because nix is a complex environment builder and the current contributes are taxed to the max.
But what is nix?
Nix's job is to create reproducible environments where you can put any library, any service, any application. It does this through compile time flags and modifying ELF headers to isolate applications on a system to their own, exclusive UNIX path. These are linked together as clojures, or a dependency graphs, that can share libraries, applications and services intetchangably with each othet, or use another version or patched version without causing any dependency conflicts.
You can fire up pretty much whatever you want and it will be reproducible elsewhere. It's like if you took a package manager, build environments, as well as VMs and micro services and make them kiss.
You can spin up a nix environment on any supported system and expect it to run 1:1. This however breeds complexity and there's a lack of NixOS contributors.
If only you spin up a nix environment on a VM or use it to replace your current build systems (because nix can use several build systems in one single environment), and then contribute back with some changes to nixpkgs, then you are helping to bring about the most powerful deployment tool since kubernetes.
No joke. Check out how you can contribute, because at the end of the day learning nix is gaining a new superpower.
This bug still exists (using nix-channel without name causes errors, a basic feature IMO) so watch out.
Unfortunately nix still needs work on it's UX.
Yeah. The UX is not in a great state. This is not an euphemism though, I think the UX is OK for advanced users, but getting used to it takes time.
Honestly given the choice I prefer the status quo, good fundamentals and clunky UX compared to the other way around – it's all volunteer work and that's a finite resource.
Can someone please point me to a repo with a nix configuration for a desktop setup with a minimum of KDE? Bonus points for it being more like Fedora.
There's an installer that makes a basic config for you where you can choose KDE as your DE.