this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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Linux
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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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Ah great. Yeah, the entire premise of it is: you get to "program" your experience instead of clicking on some install buttons.
You can temporarily just install something in your shell:
nix-shell -p firefox-esrI guess the easiest way, and what all people do is just use https://search.nixos.org/ In doubt, use your phone 😅
You can also install "nix-search-cli" to search for packages. or "nix-option" to get info on options. However, I'm not sure how you'd end up in a situation without internet and wanting to change the configuration. I mean the moment you want to compile and install anything, it needs access to Github or wherever the code is stored. And if you don't compile it yourself, it will pull it from the NixOS cache, which is also on the internet. So you can't do anything. And the times we had a DVD to install software are long gone. So it's probably down to some rare exception when you're on the train or airplane, want to prepare something to apply later?! I don't think there's a good solution except the two CLI tools and maybe a local copy of the documentation / handbook.
And in my experience, the NixOS documentation isn't great. It's either there and straightforward. Or it's a lot of searching stuff on the Wiki, forum... Using GitHub search with an appended: "language:nix" to see if someone already came up with a config. Or I'll end up reading the code. That is for more advanced things, or niche stuff. It's a bit similar to the overall experience of NixOS (in my opinion). Either things are super straightforward and mostly done for you to configure with 3 lines of code. Then there's a fine line of stuff that's moderately complex. And all the things not covered can get very complex and much more involved.