Mastodawn

Julia Evans Nov 14, 2023

some notes on nix flakes https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/11/11/notes-on-nix-flakes/

Some notes on nix flakes

Julia Evans

Julia Evans Nov 14, 2023

a few people in the replies are asking why someone might want to use nix as an OS / to manage your python packages / to manage your config files.

does anyone want to share their reasons for doing those things? I don't really know.

(please give examples of some specific problems Nix solves for you and what you like about it, don't just say "it's reproducible/declarative” :) )

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Caleb

@b0rk Some for me:
- nixpkgs is often quite up-to-date, much more than Debian/Ubuntu, and
- I can mix old & new packages - I can use the 23.05 stable packages for almost all packages, but then when I need something which HAS to be up-to-date (e.g. Plex or Signal Desktop), I can use unstable for those.
- Safety: when you apply a new config, it will almost always break BEFORE applying changes to the system (nixos-rebuild switch will fail), so you get to fix it before changing state.