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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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Good Nix OS series: five articles for new users. (feddit.it)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I found these interesting Nix OS articles series for users that want to try it and learn first things, have a good reading!

#nixos #linux #tutorial #guide

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

They have resolved this exact problem. There is an "experimental" cli tool that fixes a lot of your complaints about nix-env, nix-channel, etc. Itcs wrapped together with "flakes". This newer feature is a little different, and working with or without flakes segments the community AND the types of articles about nix, like this one.

As far as I know though, nixos related thing still have a bizarre set of commands, and even with flakes "nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade" is still how you switch configs.

And as far as installation goes, using nix-env -iA really is a bad practice. Thats installing something ad hoc like you would in any other package manager. That defeats the point of nixos, where your configuration file explicitly defines all the packages you need installed, and nothing else. Nix will remove any packages you didnt specify.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Oh that's good that they are addressing those issues with a new command. Hopefully it gets into stable soon.

Might be that nix-env -iA is bad practice! I'm strictly talking about ux design here and nix-env -iA is being recommend by blogs and nix themselves. (Nixpkgs tells you how to install using nix-env -iA)

A new user isn't going to know what bad practice is.

[–] MaliciousKebab 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

It actually recommends using nix-env -i, which is even worse because with that command it searches the whole repository instead of just getting the correct attribute on nixpkgs. It takes half a minute to run the command, it's insane.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What is this experimental tool called so I can read more about it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Add this to your nix.conf: experimental-features = nix-command flakes

Then check out nix --help.