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Why aren't more people using NixPKGs?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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For me personally, I just haven't taken any steps into the nix environment. Seems rather complex, setting up those nix files and stuff.
I use Debian on servers and LMDE on my PC, most things I need are in the Debian repos and for other cases I get by pretty good with appimage s and flatpaks. Installing is just a simple command and me happy.
Nixpkgs are probably easy too, I assume. I know a lot of people really like nix, but the effort required to start seems significant to me, especially when we have other methods that just work.
Nixpkgs can be used without knowing anything about nix. You can install almost anything by just running e.g.:
The requirement for that is the nix package manager but that should be easy to install. But yeah getting into Nixos with flakes and all that stuff can be hard.
So I can in theory just do
apt install nix-shell(or whatever), do something likenix-shell -p curland thencurljust works?Pretty much, yes. Although most of the guides install nix via curl. You can find the recommended installation procedure on the official nix website.
What I'm right now also realizing is that i switched things up.
nix-shell -p curlcreates a shell with the curl command temporarily available. If you exit this shell it's gone. I use this all the time if if i don't want to pollute my system with programs I only use once. If you want to permanently install something you have to usenix-env -iA nixpkgs.curl. But don't take my words for granted, since I have never tested this on a non-nixos machine.Note: You can also see how to install something by clicking on the package title in the nixpkgs repo.
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 switchI've only included a few packages from the actual list, but you can see how simple everything is. It just took me days to get to that point because the docs are really bad.
I use it to freshen up Debian packages. For example Debian docker is like 4 major versions behind the nix one, and it stopped being supported months ago.
Also, now that I've created the list from above, I can just run a single line to reinstall everything I need.
Why don't you just install nix on debian and see