Why aren't more people using NixPKGs?

clemdemort@lemmy.world to Linux@lemmy.ml – 127 points –

Distro agnostic packages like flatpaks and appimages have become extremely popular over the past few years, yet they seem to get a lot of dirt thrown on them because they are super bloated (since they bring all their dependencies with them).

NixPkgs are also distro agnostic, but they are about as light as regular system packages (.deb/.rpm/.PKG) all the while having an impressive 80 000 packages in their repos.

I don't get why more people aren't using them, sure they do need some tweaking but so do flatpaks, my main theory is that there are no graphical installer for them and the CLI installer is lacking (no progress bar, no ETA, strange syntax) I'm also scared that there is a downside to them I dont know about.

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Learning curve? I've meant to get around to it but my to do list is pretty big so far.

Nix is on the destinations to visit but the configurations are still confusing at a glance.

If you use Nix the imperative way (nix profile blah), you don't need to learn the Nix language at all, or write config files. Installing/removing/upgrading packages is just a single command, similar to other package managers.

Eg:

  • To search for bat on nixpkgs: nix search nixpkgs bat

  • To install bat: nix profile install nixpkgs#bat

  • To upgrade all packages: nix profile upgrade '.*'

Ref: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/new-cli/nix3-profile

Or just home-manager with a list of packages, and you avoid all of the issues imperative PMs have.

Stop making a list and start with eg: Nix Pills