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| 10 | <meta property="og:title" content="NixOS"> | ||
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| 15 | <title>NixOS · peppe.rs</title> | ||
| 16 | <body> | ||
| 17 | <div class="posts"> | ||
| 18 | <div class="post"> | ||
| 19 | <a href="/" class="post-end-link">⟵ Back</a> | ||
| 20 | <a class="stats post-end-link" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nerdypepper/site/master/posts/nixOS.md | ||
| 21 | ">View Raw</a> | ||
| 22 | <div class="separator"></div> | ||
| 23 | <div class="date"> | ||
| 24 | 01/09 — 2020 | ||
| 25 | <div class="stats"> | ||
| 26 | <span class="stats-number"> | ||
| 27 | 37.56 | ||
| 28 | </span> | ||
| 29 | <span class="stats-unit">cm</span> | ||
| 30 |   | ||
| 31 | <span class="stats-number"> | ||
| 32 | 3.3 | ||
| 33 | </span> | ||
| 34 | <span class="stats-unit">min</span> | ||
| 35 | </div> | ||
| 36 | </div> | ||
| 37 | <h1> | ||
| 38 | NixOS | ||
| 39 | </h1> | ||
| 40 | <div class="post-text"> | ||
| 41 | <p>I have been eyeing operating systems with functional package managers for a while now, aka, NixOS or Guix. Reproducible builds, declarative and rollback-able system configuration, system consistency, all sound pretty cool. I have been using NixOS for about a month now.</p> | ||
| 42 | <h3 id="installation">Installation</h3> | ||
| 43 | <p>I went with their minimal installation ISO. The installation was pretty smooth from start to end, no hitches there. The entire <a href="https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/">manual</a> is available offline, and is accessible during the installation. Very handy.</p> | ||
| 44 | <h3 id="setup">Setup</h3> | ||
| 45 | <p>The entire system is configured via <code>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</code>. Wifi, <code>libinput</code> gestures, audio, locale settings, there are options for literally everything. You can declaratively write down the packages you want installed too. With fresh installs of most distros, I usually fumble with getting things like screen backlight and media keys to work. If I do manage to fix it, I can’t carry it forward to future installations trivially. Getting all my hardware to work on NixOS is as easy as:</p> | ||
| 46 | <pre><code>{ | ||
| 47 | server.xserver.libinput.enable = true; # touchpad | ||
| 48 | programs.light.enable = true; # backlight | ||
| 49 | hardware.pulseaudio.enable = true; # audio | ||
| 50 | networking.wireless.enable = true; # wifi | ||
| 51 | }</code></pre> | ||
| 52 | <h3 id="developing-with-nix">Developing with Nix</h3> | ||
| 53 | <p>Nix makes it easy to enter environments that aren’t affected by your system configuration using <code>nix-shell</code>.</p> | ||
| 54 | <p>Builds may be generated by specifying a <code>default.nix</code> file, and running <code>nix-build</code>. Conventional package managers require you to specify a dependency list, but there is no guarantee that this list is complete. The package will build on your machine even if you forget a dependency. However, with Nix, packages are installed to <code>/nix/store</code>, and not global paths such as <code>/usr/bin/...</code>, if your project builds, it means you have included every last one.</p> | ||
| 55 | <p>Issues on most my projects have been “unable to build because <code>libxcb</code> is missing”, or “this version of <code>openssl</code> is too old”. Tools like <code>cargo</code> and <code>pip</code> are poor package managers. While they <em>can</em> guarantee that Rust or Python dependencies are met, they make assumptions about the target system.</p> | ||
| 56 | <p>For example, <a href="https://github.com/nerdypepper/site">this website</a> is now built using Nix, anyone using Nix may simply, clone the repository and run <code>./generate.sh</code>, and it would <em>just work</em>, while keeping your global namespace clean™:</p> | ||
| 57 | <div class="sourceCode" id="cb2"><pre class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb2-1"><a href="#cb2-1"></a><span class="co">#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell</span></span> | ||
| 58 | <span id="cb2-2"><a href="#cb2-2"></a><span class="co">#! nix-shell -i bash -p eva pandoc esh</span></span> | ||
| 59 | <span id="cb2-3"><a href="#cb2-3"></a></span> | ||
| 60 | <span id="cb2-4"><a href="#cb2-4"></a><span class="co"># some bash magic ;)</span></span></code></pre></div> | ||
| 61 | <p>Dependencies are included with the <code>-p</code> flag, the shell script is executed with an interpreter, specified with the <code>-i</code> flag.</p> | ||
| 62 | <h3 id="impressions">Impressions</h3> | ||
| 63 | <p>NixOS is by no means, simple. As a newcomer, using Nix was not easy, heck, I had to learn a purely functional, lazy language to just build programs. There is a lot to be desired on the tooling front as well. A well fleshed out LSP plugin would be nice (<a href="https://github.com/nix-community/rnix-lsp">rnix-lsp looks promising</a>).</p> | ||
| 64 | <p>Being able to rollback changes at a system level is cool. Package broke something? Just <code>nixos-rebuild switch --rollback</code>! Deleted <code>nix</code> by mistake? Find the binary in <code>/nix/store</code> and rollback! You aren’t punished for not thinking twice.</p> | ||
| 65 | <p>I don’t see myself switching to anything else in the near future, NixOS does a lot of things right. If I ever need to reinstall NixOS, I can generate an <a href="https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators">image of my current system</a>.</p> | ||
| 66 | <p><a href="https://u.peppe.rs/6m.png"><img src="https://u.peppe.rs/6m.png" /></a></p> | ||
| 67 | |||
| 68 | </div> | ||
| 69 | |||
| 70 | <div class=intro> | ||
| 71 | Hi. | ||
| 72 | <div class=hot-links> | ||
| 73 | <a href=https://peppe.rs/index.xml class=feed-button>Subscribe</a> | ||
| 74 | <a href=https://liberapay.com/nerdypepper/donate class=donate-button>Donate</a> | ||
| 75 | </div> | ||
| 76 | <p>I'm Akshay, I go by nerd or nerdypepper on the internet.</p> | ||
| 77 | <p> | ||
| 78 | I am a compsci undergrad, Rust programmer and an enthusiastic Vimmer. | ||
| 79 | I write open-source stuff to pass time. I also design fonts: scientifica, curie. | ||
| 80 | </p> | ||
| 81 | <p>Send me a mail at [email protected] or a message at [email protected].</p> | ||
| 82 | </div> | ||
| 83 | |||
| 84 | <a href="/" class="post-end-link">⟵ Back</a> | ||
| 85 | <a class="stats post-end-link" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nerdypepper/site/master/posts/nixOS.md | ||
| 86 | ">View Raw</a> | ||
| 87 | </div> | ||
| 88 | </div> | ||
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| 90 | </html> | ||