NixOS: Everything Everywhere All At Once

Подписаться 248 тыс.

Просмотров 313 тыс.

50% 1

Alternate Title: NixOS: Stability on the Bleeding-Edge
One day, as happens now and then with a bleeding-edge rolling release distro, a systemd update reversed my mouse buttons.
The great thing about rolling-release and cutting-edge distributions like Arch Linux, is that you get to be a beta tester, whether you like it or not!
I thought this was the way it had to be on Linux: Stability or cutting-edge features, not both.
But that wasn't right at all, with NixOS you can have everything, everywhere all at once!
❤️ If you would like to support what I do, I have set up a Patreon here: / noboilerplate - Thank you!
📄 All my videos are built in compile-checked markdown, transcript source code available here github.com/0at... this is also where you'll find links to everything mentioned.
🖊️ Corrections are in the pinned ERRATA comment.
🦀 Start your Rust journey here: • How to Learn Rust
👕 Bad shirts available here www.teepublic....
🖼️ The Phosphene Catalogue is here: • The Phosphene Catalogu...
🛰️ Lost Terminal is here: • Lost Terminal Episode ...
🌕 Modem Prometheus is here: • Modem Prometheus 1 - #...
🎵 My published albums are on spotify, itunes, etc, but I have a lot more unpublished work over at / namtao
🙏🏻 CREDITS & PROMO
My name is Tris Oaten and I produce fast, technical videos.
Follow me here tech.lgbt/deck...
Website for the show: noboilerplate.org
Come chat to me on my discord server: / discord
If you like sci-fi, I also produce a hopepunk podcast narrated by a little AI, videos written in Rust! www.losttermin...
If urban fantasy is more your thing, I also produce a podcast of wonderful modern folktales www.modemprome...
I've got a new fiction Podcast out called The Phosphene Catalogue, if you like mysteries and art, check it out!
👏🏻 Special thanks to my patreon sponsors:
- JC Andrever-Wright
- Miah Beach
- Taylor Dolezal
- Thomas Picard
- David Senk
And to all my patrons!

Опубликовано:

23 сен 2024

Ссылка:

Скачать:

Готовим ссылку...

Добавить в:

Мой плейлист

Посмотреть позже

Комментарии : 988

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

ERRATA - @Vimjoyer's video is here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-a67Sv4Mbxmc.html - 0:18 Misspelled "LINUX" in the title, classic me! - Asahi USED to be arch-based, now fedora-based. Same problem, different flavour! - The TOML examples shouldn't have semicolons at the end

@pcfreak1992 7 месяцев назад

Lynx or Linux? 0:38 😅

@SumriseHD 7 месяцев назад

I am literally installing Arch Linux, btw, after using Fedora for a while and now you upload this. 😂

@jh-devv 7 месяцев назад

@@SumriseHD yeah, it happens, though Arch has it's upsides: at least you get to know your system! I used it before NixOS, learned tons of stuff from it (e.g. drivers, package management, bleeding edge etc.)

@vildis. 7 месяцев назад

Missing ] at 4:46 on line 1?

@ryuji_terix 7 месяцев назад

In the descriptions there are "alternate video titles" but are referring to rust pure functions

@SmartassEyebrows 7 месяцев назад

Taking the Cloud world's "configuration as code" philosophy and applying it to an OS in this particular way is honestly brilliant.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

What's wild is that Nix came FIRST! It's 20 years old!

@Schmogel92 7 месяцев назад

@@NoBoilerplate what is the reason for it becoming popular only recently?

@akkesm 7 месяцев назад

@@Schmogel92I'm guessing the learning curve is so high that nobody ever got to the good part. NixOS didn't even have a GUI installer until last year. I've been using it for 3/4 years and I have no intention of leaving. It's the best distro for software development by far.

@akkesm 7 месяцев назад

On the flip side, NixOS is so hard to learn that, by the time you are able to use it, you can contribute to it. It's easy, it's all text files in a git repo. As a result, NixOS has a higher percentage of contributors compared to other distros.

@matthewcroughan 7 месяцев назад

If anything, the cloud world took that from Nix, given that Nix was created in 2003

@vimjoyer 7 месяцев назад

Thanks for the shoutout! I've been watching your channel for a long time, and I never thought I'd hear you recommend my video. Feels very surreal.

@ViperLarry-v7p 7 месяцев назад

well deserved. your videos carry every nix newbie.

@samuelwaller4924 7 месяцев назад

Moments like this make the internet great. Thank you both for helping the community like you do, I hope you feel the impact you make

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

My dude! Thank you for your nice words, and your incredible videos! You've got a great style, email me, let's chat 😀

@luisliz 7 месяцев назад

@vimjoyer If it wasn’t for you I would’ve never dared. You make it approachable.

@vaisakhkm783 7 месяцев назад

@@luisliz ikr.. he is only the reason i got started and still loving it..

@blehbleh9283 7 месяцев назад

NixOS was a bit too limited for packages back when I first saw it in mid 2010s, but I think that graph and the annoyance of updating/keeping up with news for Arch might've just convinced me to switch

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

Right! I had the same impression, it's WILD, everything is here, including all my weird music plugins and streaming stuff!

@blehbleh9283 7 месяцев назад

Hahaha. I just got the config table 12:26 This is so much better. So much brain space was wasted on which config where and what to edit. Thanks for the videos! Love the channel

@asdfghyter 6 месяцев назад

i probably wouldn’t recommend NixOS to most linux users, especially because of the learning curve, but i would certainly recommend that every single arch user tries it out

@DeerDesigner 7 месяцев назад

Small correction - Asahi USED to be arch-based, nowadays the official, blessed asahi distro is fedora-based

@psi4j 6 месяцев назад

🤮

@fastlearner292 3 месяца назад

Bruh

@mpogrzebski 2 месяца назад

Don't be a hater @@psi4j

@xanderplayz3446 Месяц назад

@@psi4jWhat’s wrong with fedrora (except DNF, DNF is slooooow).

@jeiang 7 месяцев назад

I've been using NixOS for about 6 months now, and I love it. My favorite"feature" is impermanence, so my system rebuilds itself from fresh on every boot.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

Ooh, that's cool, Vimjoyer talks about that feature.

@jeiang 7 месяцев назад

@@NoBoilerplate yea it's useful, like for backups because all my files not managed by my config (my system state) are in one place (under /persist), so I just need to back up that

@angeldude101 7 месяцев назад

Mounting root on a tmpfs for a daily driver feels like it should be insanity, and yet NixOS lets you get away with so much that it's somehow become completely normalized. It's kind of amazing.

@Schmogel92 7 месяцев назад

What are your boot times like?

@jeiang 7 месяцев назад

@@Schmogel92 pretty quick, I also have disk encryption, but I think it’s around 20 - 30 secs

@cid-chan-2 7 месяцев назад

Some nitpicks - nixos-unstable has automated tests. In fact these tests cause nixos-unstable to lag behind master by up to one week if there are critical test failures, like rendering the system in an unbootable state, or similar problems. NixOS-stable works by freezing versions of critical system components, only selectively porting back versions where neccessary. - Addendum: even the package definitions are tracked by git. There is also the nixos master branch. You dont want to use that branch ever directly. This one is the branch with 0 tests applied (except: is it valid nix code?) - you can also configure your system using json.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

Interesting! Thanks for those details, I don't think you're contradicting anything I've said, just providing more information? And yes, I know about configuring nix in json. That is not an improvement from my point of view lol

@emdivine 6 месяцев назад

@@NoBoilerplate could you sell me on how toml would be a better alternate config format than json? If you're going to pick a non-recommended format anway

@NatoBoram 4 месяца назад

YAML and Toml are easier to read and write than JSON for humans as you don't have to be concerned about escaping quotes in the middle of a string

@FreshSmog 7 месяцев назад

I think you forgot to mention another important part. Nix can be installed as just a package manager on any other distro and gets you much of the benefits of nixos on user packages. For average home users who don't configure systemd or manage user groups, the package manager might be all they need. It's also why people use home-manager, it installs and configures home packages and works on both nixos and nix package manager.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

That's a useful part, but having all your software, kernel to userspace configured in one system is the life-changing part I'm excited about.

@jeffrey1298 6 месяцев назад

there's also another project called system-manager which allows nixos modules on non-nixos distros. i've never tried it and have no idea how well it works, but it exists!

@MrMrCraftmine 6 месяцев назад

yeah well, i tried using nix and home-manager on my Pop_OS!, however it completely broke my system beyond repair and I had to reinstall...

@idkwtpaah 7 месяцев назад

You know that something is amazing when No Boilerplate covers it NixOS rocks!

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

I'm so late to the party lol

@bew 7 месяцев назад

But you came, welcome o/

@DavidConnerCodeaholic 7 месяцев назад

As someone who’s basically only ever written a single RPM… writing pkgs in Nix and Guix is so unbelievably efficient in comparison. Linux would have to be ludicrous not to gravitate towards these solutions.

@0thLaw 7 месяцев назад

Video suggestion: rapid prototyping in Rust. I love rust and colleagues comment all the time the amount of effort it requires to build even a proof of concept. Granted, rust forces you to do you due diligence before you can even try to run it. However, I would very much like to learn tips and techniques to easily do rapid development, cut some corners to get it going. Some ideas: disallow optimized builds when corners are still cut, use todo!(), initially build everything with just traits and automocks and gradually implement them (feels like tdd without the tests, but still designed to be loosely coupled).

@Rudxain 6 месяцев назад

Another tip is to avoid the borrow-checker by simply `clone`ing everything. `rustc` can sometimes optimize `clone`s into borrows

@user-anonymous1337 6 месяцев назад

Try using Copy traits everywhere. It might go against the Rust philosophy but if you want fast prototyping it's definitely make it faster.

@Nicfallenangel 7 месяцев назад

12:53 "I'm sharing this just between you, and me, and 200,000 of my closest friends." 😂 That was gold. And I've never thought of using TOML, YAML, or any other ML to generate config. That's an interesting approach to get around learning the syntax at first.

@Synthetica9 7 месяцев назад

I've been running nixos as my main os since 2017, and I still have this original install 1000+ generations later.

@ToyKeeper 6 месяцев назад

I've been running Debian as my main OS since 1997, and despite upgrading, replacing, and diversifying the hardware a bunch of times, I still have basically the same original install 27 years later. It is a little weird though, seeing the 1990s in a "ls -alt ~". :D

@sachinchaudhary1310 5 месяцев назад

@@ToyKeeper bro what ? are u sure wtf bro.. i mean amazing bro...

@ToyKeeper 5 месяцев назад

@@sachinchaudhary1310 Not a bro.

@sachinchaudhary1310 5 месяцев назад

@@ToyKeeper really women's are amazing

@arden6725 5 месяцев назад

@@ToyKeeper never thought i’d see the same toykeeper that made the firmware my flashlight runs in a youtube comment section!

@andylees8939 7 месяцев назад

FYI, arch based distros using btrfs for the root FS allow rollback to a previous state. This has saved my bacon on a few (important) occasions. Garuda is worthwhile checking out.

@0LoneTech 7 месяцев назад

Also possible, but takes some setting up, on Debian using snapper, some subvolumes and hooks. It covers the rollback function, but not so much the background building with atomic live switching.

@antonliakhovitch8306 6 месяцев назад

Before I switched to NixOS, I used OpenSUSE specifically for this. Snapper is great and I still use it on my user files

@NeftisIsHere 6 месяцев назад

snapper my beloved

@electricant55 3 месяца назад

Same with openSUSE (another rolling distro)

@ejiek 7 месяцев назад

nvd - Nix/NixOS package version diff tool This tool helps to see what actually changes within an update. After updating flake.lock or any other tempering with my config I run: ‘nixos-rebuild build --flake 'flake-path#' && nvd diff /run/current-system result’. It shows it all. Version changes, package and dependency changes.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

cool! thank you

@scottmuc2112 7 месяцев назад

This was a really good overview! I'm nix-curious and am often confused on what exactly nix is... now I understand it's more than just 1 tool. The super-updated package repo has me sold. I used to think nix-folks just loved having everything locked down to a known good version and letting it stay that way. Now I understand that nix is a toolkit to help you never leave your packages, config, and dependencies stale.

@biscotty6669 5 месяцев назад

Great to see yet more vids on NixOS. For those wanting to try, I strongly suggest installing Nix on your current distro and/or NixOS in a VM. It will be way less frustrating. You can take advantage of many features of Nix without running NixOS itself. Ideally set up a system configured as you like with all you need in a VM, and use the configs to build your configured system right away when you do the real install. You won't have to redo anything, so no wasted time but a "safe" learning environment.

@ryancarlson9680 3 месяца назад

That’s a super helpful idea, thank you

@biscotty6669 3 месяца назад

@@ryancarlson9680 even after running it for 6 months on a server I didn't feel comfortable flipping the switch until everything I needed was working, so I was sure my "real work" wasn't impacted. 🍀

@twenty-fifth420 7 месяцев назад

0:35 Linx OS is a Linux distro that purrs when you pet the start button and roars mightly when you install a package 😂. We have fun here at no boilerplate.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

woops! added to the errata :-D

@xard64 7 месяцев назад

What makes the NixOS way of working interesting is that it seems to be a perfect fit for a corporate deployment. While I haven't still tested using NixOS it seems like that with it you could easily create static configurations and then deploy them number of machines and easily update them using a single base configuration file. The base configuration in turn could be layered to multiple custom variants featuring legacy tweaks for the corner case installations without interfering the updates.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

EXACTLY, but also that's cool for home use, I was able to put my desktop's config file on my laptop, run a rebuild, and 15 minutes later had a copy of my deskop. it was a MOMENT, for me!

@SolarLiner 7 месяцев назад

As a matter of fact, you *can* manage NixOS configurations from remotely. With flakes it's even more powerful as you can have multiple archetype configurations for an entire fleet of servers and desktops and have them rebuild all from a single "command center" machine. I almost want to become a sysadmin just to be able to feel that powerful.

@IogaMaster 7 месяцев назад

I run a few servers in my home for various tasks. Running a deployment and all servers update is magical.

@shawnmiguel 7 месяцев назад

I was just watching some past videos and wishing that you would make something covering Nix. Thanks man, your videos help me a lot.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

Thank you :-)

@codetothemoon 7 месяцев назад

Very nice! Love the NixOS approach to things. Gave it a try recently but probably gave up too quickly. You’ve inspired me (and undoubtedly many others) to give it another go!

@hiibolt 7 месяцев назад

I’ve daily’d NixOS for over 2 years now, and the rollback menu is so, incredibly, amazingly powerful. I use a non-Qwerty layout, and broke my operating system multiple times getting native drivers to work. On any other distro, it would not have worked. Now, with a functional version, have the setup in its own Nixfile, permanently hosted on GitHub. Write once, fix never. It’s the Rust of operating systems.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

IT'S THE RUST OF OPERATING SYSTEMS!

@salameez Месяц назад

More like the haskell but sure

@sharperguy 7 месяцев назад

One of the best things about NixOS is that when something requires a tutorial on Ubuntu on Arch, on nixos it just requires adding some lines to your config. In the tutorial case it can be really easy to lose track of what you did, whereas on nixos the changes sit right alongside everything else on your system. The downside is that since it's a little niche there isn't always any good explanation for how to get something working on nixos in the first place. But at least when you DO figure it out, it's extremely easy to share it with others.

@jh-devv 7 месяцев назад

Awesome to see you cover NixOS! 🎉

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

I couldn't not, I AM FINALLY POWERFUL ENOUGH!

@vaisakhkm783 7 месяцев назад

@@NoBoilerplate it's too powerful.. especially when you love functional... :D

@awabqureshi814 7 месяцев назад

I was just looking into this yesterday, and decided I would wait until someone else made a video on it. I am very happy to see this. You read my mind!

@onrir 7 месяцев назад

"or whatever it is python is using by the time you are watching this" 😅

@fizipcfx 7 месяцев назад

pip poetry conda pyproject.toml...., i think he is right 😂😂😂

@Anonymous4045 7 месяцев назад

pip, poetry, anaconda, pipenv, pdm, apt, virtualenv, take your pick 😂

@marro7120 7 месяцев назад

he said also npm, and its not for python 😅

@roze_sha 7 месяцев назад

Rye

@geeshta 6 месяцев назад

hatch

@samskyset 7 месяцев назад

i haven't been genuinely excited by linux content like this before. i wrote off nix without really looking into it, but this is unironically exactly what i've been looking for--after a journey spanning mint to arch bahaha, thank you for this lovely introduction :)

@RenderingUser 7 месяцев назад

NO WAY. I could have never expected this. I've taken a lot of interest in nix recently. Can't believe you covered it

@iwastholo 7 месяцев назад

I knew you had to eventually drop a nix video

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

I've been fighting it for so long lol

@MeshVoid 6 месяцев назад

Just to mention a thing about NixOS having way more packages than aur. Does it "really" have more packages? I am currently using NixOS and what I see is packages for separate fonts, libraries, many packages are poorly structured and don't have lts versions of the same software, so sometimes you can't just declare an older version and more modern version of the same software to be pulled without writing some workarounds. If you have to declaratively point to each separate element from fonts to drivers, libraries, software, then, yes you will end up having more repositories than anything else. I can't say that these packages are very well maintained, sometimes packages have broken links and you have to figure out what to do about it and it's not pleasant.

@oglothenerd 6 месяцев назад

I used NixOS, had to stop due to FHS issues, so I use EndeavourOS with a program I made with Rust called Rebos that does repeatability with a config file.

@jmsp000 7 месяцев назад

Huh, wondering when/if you'd touch on Nix. Half a year ago I decided to learn NixOS (ie. use it as my main partition and just suffer until i figured it out) and simply being able to go back to an older generation when I inevitably screwed something up was extremely pleasant. It's also made cooking up a development environment just that much easier. Keep up the good videos!

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

Thank you!

@_Lumiere_ 7 месяцев назад

Do you still use it?

@jmsp000 6 месяцев назад

That I do. @@_Lumiere_

@edwolt 7 месяцев назад

I started to use NixOS some months ago. And it's really nice that most of the state of my system can be easily read from a file, for example, I was not able to know what packages come with the distro and which I intalled when I was using Manjaro. Also the reproducibility rocks. I could easily setup another computer just by running the rebuild. Also it's really good that I can choose what packages is bleeding edge, which proprietary softwares I accept in my system and have to explicitly allow what insecure/end of life packages I want to install. I wish there were a simple way to disallow some packages to be installed, like not allowing Electron or somethung like that.

@siddharthbisht8522 7 месяцев назад

That does it, I started learning and using rust last year because of you. I was thinking of trying nix and now I think the stars have alligned

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

Sorry/notsorry! :-D

@neoney 6 месяцев назад

9:05 the thing I recommend to do to also have a rollback of your configurations, is putting the files in your /etc using environment.etc."config/configuration.nix".source = ./config.nix; etc. this means the files are copied to the nix store on build time, and then in /etc/config, you always have the currently-booted config, even if you didn't commit it

@Synthetica9 7 месяцев назад

1:26 the inflection point was earlier: old NixOS releases receive basically no support, so old packages go "stale" (no longer the latest version, simply due to time passing since the last commit to those releases)

@nakretkacisnienie 7 месяцев назад

i use arch btw

@jh-devv 7 месяцев назад

I use nix btw

@justsomeonepassingby3838 7 месяцев назад

I use guix btw

@7Dev. 7 месяцев назад

Mee to btw

@happycats-go8sv 7 месяцев назад

I don't use gentoo :(

@Posponger 6 месяцев назад

I use linux from scratch btw (i don't)

@loupax 7 месяцев назад

You won me at 3:40 I always wanted to have all my package definitions in a single file, and always wondered why no distro does that. I use arch btw and I still have no idea which packages I installed to use only once and then forget about it. Time to distrohop I guess.

@__shaun__ 7 месяцев назад

JIMMY CARR USES NIX?!

@luisliz 7 месяцев назад

I’ve been working on nix this week and you bring out this video. Love it

@1234minecraft5678 16 дней назад

This video kicked of my NixOS journey and i am loving it, great video Triss, as always and thank you! With flakes you can even dual yield stable and unstable at the same time.

@DaveWarnock 7 месяцев назад

Interesting. I recently returned to Debian from Ubuntu as a full time Linux user since 1998 (almost always without a dual boot). What I missed in your video and then from the NixOs website is anything about the philosophy, whether there is a social contract, how it relates to commercialization. You mention the USB drive option and it would be great to see more detail on how to use a USB build as a way of easing migration rather than a full nuclear option of OS replacement.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

NixOS strikes what I think is a great middle ground between libre and practicality, unlike gnu guix, which is libre only. In the nixos installer, you are presented with a checkbox labelled "Allow unfree software?" it's disabled by default. I want to play games, run music software, and use proprietary drivers, so I checked it. If I were installing on a server, I'd not have to. Purity must always be balanced with practicality, guix has 9k fresh packages, and I simply can't run my life in it. I can with NixOS!

@DaveWarnock 7 месяцев назад

@@NoBoilerplate I'm not an extremist FSF person, I think Debian has a sane middle ground. Ubuntu is heading in a concerning direction, for me, for example with snap and the snapstore. It looks like NixOs might be a good place for me to help with consistency over a couple of desktops, a couple of laptops and some Raspberry Pi projects. Although I don't want the same packages on all systems (eg Raspberry Pi are either dedicated to boat navigation and instruments or media systems, my wife desktop to office stuff and kdenlive, my 2 systems very multi-purpose including development). I'd already been attracted to nixshell as an alternative to Docker for rust development projects with databases etc (looks like nix develop might be even better). It does look like there is a steep learning curve to getting on top of the current "best practice" eg flakes.

@friartech 23 дня назад

The absolutely best introduction I’ve yet to see regarding nixos. I have been slowly exploring it as my servers operating systems replacement / and this video just sold me. Replacing my arch desktop? Not sure yet. But I may just fall in love again :) thank you for this video

@sleepy-monax 7 месяцев назад

The more package than the AUR point is really debatable since the two distribution count packages differently

@miropaintola 7 месяцев назад

"What Sisyphus sees when turning on his computer" Ah yes, one must imagine an Arch user happy.

@ougonce 7 месяцев назад

I've been using NixOS for 3 or so years at this point, and it's really hard to imagine using anything else at this point. There have been multiple instances of having to replicate my system (either in a different machine, or on the same one after hardware failure) that took me literal minutes, instead of the multiple-hour endeavour that it would be in any other operating system. I always felt like operating systems were extremely brittle and prone to breakage, but it wasn't until I committed to NixOS that I realized the extent of it.

@ougonce 7 месяцев назад

Btw, here's a tip: if you'd like, you can specify in your config file that you'd like your current configuration to be copied to a directory in `/etc`, essentially giving you a way to inspect the configuration that built the currently active derivation at any time. Look into `environment.etc`, and the `.mode` option to make it copy instead of symlink.

@ougonce 7 месяцев назад

Oh also! If you'd like to be even more declarative, I recommend looking into Flakes. That way you don't have to mess with channels, and even they will be declaratively set in a file (as well as any other dependencies your system might have).

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

Thank you! Yes flakes and home manager are in my future :D

@SuperOblivionfan 7 месяцев назад

Nixos killed my distro hopping syndrome. Its the logical conclusion of linux imo

@eksno 7 месяцев назад

I'm always surprised about how likeminded we are in terms of systems in life. You've gotten me on polyphasic, obsidian (switched to vim + github repo but fundamentally same), and also make videos on stuff I'm already using like Linux, Rust, and now surprisingly NixOS which I've been using as my main distro for 5 months now! Nice to have someone where I know every video will be based on the same fundamental ideals I have. (looking at your videos I see you also, like me, have adhd and autism so there's that lol)

@angeldude101 7 месяцев назад

This channel did have a video on ADHD, and I think Rust and NixOS both appeal to me in similar ways that are partly a result of my AutDHD. My autism liked it when things are consistent and predictable anyways, but my ADHD can result in both a desire to move fast and break things, and a poor memory making it hard to remember what I've already done. Neither Nix nor Rust fully allows for moving fast and breaking things, but they do allow me to try ridiculous things when I get the urge to, and will proof read my work to make sure it won't break things too badly, and NixOS in particular let's me just pretend that what I did to break the system never actually happened. And then regarding the memory aspect, both Rust and NixOS are great for collaborating with other people, but that also makes them great for collaborating with yourself across time if you've forgotten enough in the meantime to effectively count as a different person when coming back to a project. (And the OS is certainly a project you won't completely forget about and will keep coming back to.)

@eksno 7 месяцев назад

@@angeldude101 > (And the OS is certainly a project you won't completely forget about and will keep coming back to.) This is one of the exact reasons I got into nixos and actually commited. Where every change I make will be persisted through my life moving forward, the knowledge that, over time, if I use it as my main distro, I'll become as innately familiar with it and know every in-and-out. I can say though I'm not even close to knowing everything about nixos though haha! Just recently discovered the wonder of nix-shell 4 months in so I could remove all my project based dependencies from my main config, and share the reproducable dev environment with my 0 co-workers who also use nixos lol.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

My autism video is coming next month! :-D

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

My autism video is coming next month! :-D

@Tobiky 7 месяцев назад

Thank you, I similarly tried NixOS a while back and the whole nix-env scared me off. This is exactly what I wanted out of nix!

@notafbihoneypot8487 7 месяцев назад

BoilerOS when?

@draakisback 6 месяцев назад

It's been a joy to watch your videos as a content creator and as a software engineer. You're given me some good ideas for building my tutorials without having to sift through an hour long live code session. If I use markdown like you do, I can do most of what I want and then add animations and audio in editing.

@sweglord227 7 месяцев назад

honestly would check it out if i felt like nuking my system. maybe at a later date when i have less things going on. seems very cool and just what im into

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

Yeah, it's a great little weekend project. If you have an old spare laptop lying around, do what I did: test out all your apps on there, make sure it seems like it'll do what you want, then just take that configuration file, and put it on your main machine. One rebuild later and you're at the same state as you were on the laptop - WILD!

@IsawU 7 месяцев назад

I love the idea of NixOS and I'll probably get into it, but from my gentle QEMU attempts, I had a very hard time even getting the correct desktop to run. Sometimes I'd get to the greeter, but after logging in the screen would just flash and throw me back to the greeter. Sometimes I didn't even get to the greeter. Using it in the terminal was terrific.

@Tanja42 7 месяцев назад

It really was a matter of time til you made this video 😸 Nice to see it; jumped on the NixOS train myself about two months ago ❄

@yungabilify 7 месяцев назад

NixOS is such a neat concept for an operating system, I like the idea of it for servers especially. This is appealing to me because I have in the past made post-install scripts for Arch just to have that type of automation. Might have to give this OS another shot

@pengie_ 7 месяцев назад

Havent watched the full video yet but as a NixOS user im so happy you made this video, always love seeing nix get more exposure

@TobiasFrei 7 месяцев назад

Thanks a lot for your inspiring ideas here. And yes, in January I switched all my machines (except for one development workstation on Arch Linux) to NixOS -- using Flakes, using Home Manager. And then this language 🥰 , e.g. # Make use of recursive attribute set rec { # Fibonacci seqence, naive recursive: fib = n: if n < 2 then n else fib (n - 1) + fib (n - 2) ; # powers, recursive with nested functions for currying: pow = b: e: if e == 0 then 1 else pow b (e - 1) * b; }

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

cool!

@0thLaw 7 месяцев назад

Here, algorithm, have a comment.

@vasujain2 7 месяцев назад

Same level of stability and rolling the system back feature can be obtained by using - "arch + btrfs + snapper". That's what I use to never have a broken os. Works like a charm. But yeah NixOS is really great and unique approach to os.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

fs snapshots are not the right level of abstraction for me. snapshots are "files on disk at this time". That's not what I want to model. nixos generations are an exact frozen set of system and user config THAT WORKED TOGETHER. You can have 10 new generations a minute in a busy flurry of configuration, or you could have 1 new generation a year.

@0LoneTech 7 месяцев назад

@@NoBoilerplate... or didn't work, which is when you needed the rollback, and the reason it didn't work is usually in some state external to your configuration file so you can't replicate the working system by copying the configuration file. I have an apt setup that makes system snapshots after apt finishes making changes. It has downsides, in particular that nix can build and set up the updates without interrupting the current system in a way dpkg doesn't. Merging system and user configuration in one file is also a distinct feature, but it comes at a cost e.g. when I can't get Nix to make vi point to nvim.

@razorree 6 месяцев назад

which video editing program do you use ? and other software for making YT films ?

@stinkytoby 7 месяцев назад

I take full credit for the quote at 7:38!

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

NOT NOW SON

@stinkytoby 7 месяцев назад

@@NoBoilerplate>:3

@myfavouritecolorisgreen 3 месяца назад

hii, i had tried nixos in the past. but the mirrors used for downloading packages were too slow since they might not be configured for my region. i know how to update my mirrors on arch. i couldn't figure out how to do it on nixos. I'd love some direction regarding this!

@_Lumiere_ 7 месяцев назад

This might just push me to finally try this as my daily driver. I'm just a somewhat beginner CS student though, so it is a bit intimidating. My questions are: how long have you been using it for? How happy are you with it for recreational use? I've heard that people have issues with it not being FHS compliant, though I'm not very familiar with what that means. Have you had any issues with that?

@christopheriman4921 7 месяцев назад

It not being FHS compliant just means that if you were to try and find a config file or a binary where it would be on a standard linux machine that it will likely not be there, and I have heard it causes a few headaches but I so far haven't run into that many problems with it.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

This is correct, though I showed the 2-line fix in the video

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

Your first Linux should be Ubuntu. By the time you want to move, you'll know what your second one should be :-)

@_Lumiere_ 7 месяцев назад

@@NoBoilerplate My first linux was indeed ubuntu 😅. 5 years ago or so. Then I moved to PopOS, then to Manjaro, then to EndeavourOS, and now to trying out Fedora and Linux Mint. I'm no stranger to Linux, but, at the same time, I'm not very confident at using it beyond your typical OS, simple installing, updating etc. I'm comfortable enough to use Arch, as long as I rely on the community and the wiki to troubleshoot things, editing grub configs etc. If an OS requires me to write scripts and the like, that's a bit more than what I'm used to. So I guess I'm just wondering how much more knowledge I'd need to comfortably use NixOS when compared to something like Arch?

@sadboisibit 7 месяцев назад

I've been putting off converting my desktop computer from Windows 10 to Linux for the last several months. Watching this (and finally canceling my Adobe subscription) was the push I needed to finally convert.

@sweetbabyalaska 7 месяцев назад

I just started learning Nix and I'm pretty excited to get up and running

@panosangel2883 7 месяцев назад

Your content, no matter the topic, is a breeze! I'm glad I found your channel, it literally has revolutionized my way of thinking...and acting!

@ToyKeeper 6 месяцев назад

How often do you reboot? How many old snapshots can it boot into? I only reboot like once a year, because it's really disruptive to have to close everything, reboot, then restore my session. A significant amount of state is lost in the process... and with updates, I can count on always having to fix a few things due to upstream changes.

@abbcc555 7 месяцев назад

@5:50 I felt butterflies in my stomach. I just wish there was an easy way to revert back to Arch when I still find a way to mess it up :)

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

It's impossible to break - isn't that a relief!

@angeldude101 7 месяцев назад

It's not _completely_ impossible to break. It just requires filesystem corruption to achieve, and even then it can still often be salvaged, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

@lavish125 5 месяцев назад

a bit of an off topic question but since u mentioned you use linux to make these videos as well, what video editor do you use?

@TheJayman213 6 месяцев назад

While I got into Emacs I never got into WMs. NixOS seems like another one of those things you can spend a lifetime configuring. So for now I'm just trying other immutable distros. Not having packages share any dependencies seems like overkill. You can just keep using a single container for everything until you hit a conflict and add new containers accordingly.

@Anonymous4045 7 месяцев назад

How is it with servers? I have a home server that I run Debian on, would it make sense to have a configuration.nix for my pc and laptop and another for my server?

@HiAdrian 7 месяцев назад

The way I see it, it makes a lot more sense for servers than desktops. Far fewer packages to install, no tinkering, and the need for reproducibility.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

FANTASTIC for servers!

@amydebuitleir 7 месяцев назад

You can even have a single configuration file that does some custom stuff depending on whether the machine is a desktop, laptop, or server.

@robinkneepkens4970 7 месяцев назад

oh yess, the perfect channel to cover nix/nixos. I've been getting into them recently as well and they feel like such powerful tools to have as a software developer (or anyone who does anything with programming)

@Anonymous4045 7 месяцев назад

Which aspects specifically do you find the most helpful in software development?

@fabiandrinksmilk6205 7 месяцев назад

@@Anonymous4045Nix Shell, you can setup a development environment easily without affecting the rest of your system. You specify what packages or environment variables you want and Nix creates a new shell with those available to you, when you're done you exit the shell and those packages are gone.

@B1adeLegend 6 месяцев назад

Your Linux proverbs always resonate with me - from a general user standpoint, the true power of a Linux distro is the package manager! Everything else is personal.

@TerribleTom113 3 месяца назад

I've run into an issue with NixOS. I install usuing the GUI, on a clean wipe, and everything seems to work find for the install. Problem is that my config file (and everything else) is "read-only," and I don't have admin privileges to edit the files, install packages, or change read/write pernissions. I've reinstalled thrice now, and Googled for hours at this point. Am I missing something stuoid ovvious during install? Am i just fundamentally misunderstanding something about how NixOS works and how to install software on it? Any help would be much appreciated.

@diegoasanch 7 месяцев назад

Wake up babe, new No Boilerplate video 🍿

@fuzzy-02 7 месяцев назад

I love this video, and was about to convert my old laptop from Ubuntu (was windows 8.1 but too slow, linux revived it) to NixOs but I got lost from around half part of the video. Guess I need to find some free day to sit down and research first

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

vimjoyer's video I linked is SO good

@BryanChance 7 месяцев назад

I like your presentation style. Quite effective, too. LOL I've seen about 5 videos about NixOS in the last 6 months or so. Your video got me downloading NixOS now.. ;-) Thanks mate! EDIT: Nix language is very cool! I had no idea it existed, until i saw this video.

@Terraspark4941 6 месяцев назад

You sound like if Tom Scott took a lighter coffee today and decided to talk about Linux distros instead of weird places around the globe; and I love it ❄ I wonder how long it may take for NixOS to overtake Arch, with such a large difference in safety and simplicity? Great video, overall!

@DeuxisWasTaken 6 месяцев назад

Thanks for making this video! I learned about Nix about 2 years ago when searching for an heavily customizeable bleeding edge OS that doesn't have as annoying quirks as Arch or Gentoo, and I'm still mad I only then learned it exists. It's by far the best thing to happen to Linux distros since the invention of package managers.

@lukeh990 7 месяцев назад

What I see this being really good for, is usage in enterprise environments. Like digital signage or POS. Maybe in employee workstation if any company is daring enough to not use Windows.

@NahrAlma 4 месяца назад

FIIIINE. I will give it another try. Thankfully I was smart enough to save my nix config file from back then. I now feel very smart indeed.

@Tn5421Me 3 месяца назад

7:20 There are two reasons nix-env exists: 1. test a program before including it in your declarative config 2. when using the nix package manager on top of a non-NixOS operating system.

@CrazyMineCuber 7 месяцев назад

Home-manager is like an extra library of NixOS options for your home folder and user level settings. Home-manager is also usable on different distributions than NixOS, including mac. You can configure your dotfiles in the nix configuration language if you want, but I this just causes too much of a write-in-one-language-and-debug-in-another-language problem. Therefore, I just make home-manager act exactly like stow by using the option mkOutOfStoreSymlink to link my dotfiles to my home directory and keeping them editable in place.

@conrad586 7 месяцев назад

I love you making a nixos video. I've been using it since half a year but cant get over the steep beginner learning curve, which is alright for using only on my laptop for simpler things like notes and browsing but I'd love to get away from windows in the future.

@semitangent 7 месяцев назад

Super interesting, you've clarified many of my confusions regarding nixOS and its hype. So just to put it into my words and my perspective: As a "pain enjoyer", someone who has learned a *lot* about Linux in general from having to track down odd configuration and fixing one-off kernel panics, nixOS would take exactly that away for the (obviously) Greater Good of having a stable daily nixOS driver? Is that paraphrasing correct?

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

You get both stability and bleeding edge features

@kfftfuftur 7 месяцев назад

I don't know, Last time I tried NixOS I didn't really know where to find documentation for configuring third party packages. Also after installation I usually use Gui tools as much as possible to set up the system, but even things like setting the refresh rate of my monitor took forever since I first had to figure out the syntax and then figure out how the options are named when I would usually just select what I want in the gnome settings app with a couple of mouseclicks.

@brainstormsurge154 4 месяца назад

Just getting into using NixOS after trying Arch and one of the interesting features I've liked is the `nix-shell` command. I don't know the details on how it works but it feels awesome since you can test a package on a separate shell (maybe think of it like docker) and if you don't like the package you can just exit the shell and the package is gone and you don't have to worry about cleaning up any .local or .config files/folders. Again, maybe I'm wrong about the details but it feels really neat.

@Merc399 4 месяца назад

Ubuntu is linux like Harleys are motorcycles : theyre not. Ubuntu collects telemetry data and is corpo run. nixOS looks interesting from a security and attack vector stand-point

@fakecrafter7448 7 месяцев назад

using nixos since a few month and struggled with the dynamic library thing in nim just a few days ago and instead used other libraries, so this was actually helpful to my specific situation. And it was also the only reason i ever doubted nixos

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

it means I never have to package up stuff manually just to get a plugin working.

@ninjarunner 6 месяцев назад

3:50 If you don't mind me asking, what "arch one"? You either install arch manually from the CLI or use the archinstall script. Or you can use an unofficial install script/iso, but I wouldn't call any of those THE arch installer. Regardless of which you meant, I agree that the nix installer looks better, I just found this statement confusing.

@fcriado92 4 месяца назад

I bought a secondhand laptop mostly to test this out as it looked fun. No regrets, this distro is great! Thanks for the recommendation, I'm sure you brought a lot of newbies to NixOS with this. I expect this style of package manager will become more popular because it makes so much sense.

@borisoid 7 месяцев назад

So glad NixOS is getting attention it deserves. I played with in in a VM , read a lot about it and I loved it. I'm using kubuntu with nix home-manager (flake) and I really want to just install NixOS. The only problem I see (apart from being lazy to move my work related stuff to a new system) is that if your team doesn't use Nix - you are screwed. You will need to set up a dev-container or a full VM to develop projects that were set up and configured on and for an FHS system.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

I found the python developer! (joking! this problem happens with many languages) The real solution to your problems is to encourage your team to move to container-based development, that way it'll work across linux/osx/windows AND your nixos machine. "install a bunch of these random dependencies" is not how we should develop software :-D

@borisoid 7 месяцев назад

Wow, you nailed it, I am a python dev 😄 Containers are awesome in 2 ways: - You can be very precise about your app's environment. It works on my machine - it will work on any machine - You don't pollute your system/home with some packages, npm/python global installs, python venvs, configs, caches, etc. I don't understand why I *NEVER* heard anyone having concerns about this. The first time was when I learned this: "Nix exposes to your userspace only the packages you explicitly installed". Nix doesn't save you from all trash files though... Containers do

@TheSuperComputer0 6 месяцев назад

@borisoid I think you'll want to check out nix-shell for your dev environments. Wasn't covered in this video, but it's an excellent alternative to docker containers, fully integrated with your OS. There's also direnv, which can automatically switch to these nix shell environments based on directories. They are relatively small files, any other nixos devs on the team will see you as a Chad, and maybe you'll convert other curious devs.

@doctorbobstone 6 месяцев назад

@@NoBoilerplate I'm curious. When you recommend container-based development, are you imagining web development or other systems where you almost entirely interact with your application through the network or through another program like a web server or similar? I'm an embedded developer and I also do a lot of system programming. When I'm not developing something which uses hardware, I'm probably writing something that I intend to call from the command line, so having binaries which only work inside one special container (or which I have to build multiple times) just never seems to make sense to me. That being said, having containers for CI or so you *can* debug build problems separate from your idiosyncratic system and so on? That's great. I just want portability so that things work inside and out so you can be flexible and use the tools most suited to your situation. So, my curiosity: I'm curious how what I've described jibes with your recommendation to move towards container-based development. Are you trying to get more benefits than I've outlined? Or solving different problems? Or do you basically agree (or disagree) with my position?

@ProudNitro 6 месяцев назад

Hey Tris, just thought I'd let you know that subtitles/transcript are an easy add for content quality, and with your attention to detail on everything else, I was surprised that you have yet to include them. Let me know if you need someone to do the labor.

@-aexc- 7 месяцев назад

i just dont like having so many versions of the same dependencies and the symlinks that just complicate everything. i switched back to fedora from nixos after getting sick of it (planning to switch to opensuse slowroll (slow tumbleweed) when i have time, for rollback (and it seems to have more packages i use than fedora))

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

how strange, it's been nothing but plain sailing for me, and I've played steam games, compiled huge Rust projects, and produced whole video and music projects too! It's all working lovely!

@RenderingUser 7 месяцев назад

10:44 if packages don't share dependencies, doesn't that mean all packages will be unreasonably large?

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

Slightly bigger, yes, but not has extremely optimised detection of shared packages and intelligently links between them safely

@RenderingUser 7 месяцев назад

@@NoBoilerplate so if I install another simple gui app it won't reinstall the entirety of gtk? That's great

@0LoneTech 7 месяцев назад

It's somewhat inaccurate. Packages do share dependencies, but they can have their own. So e.g. if I have three programs using one library they might all share, but that oddball package requiring a different version can have its own, without the library packager needing to do anything special. Theoretically it may go awry with things like dbus that is designed to fail across versions. The unreasonably large packages scenario is exactly what e.g. snap and docker do, where the dependency is something like "Ubuntu 22.04 with Gnome" rather than "Gtk and GMP" and not even Ubuntu can share that with the installed system; it's a separate container image.

@RenderingUser 7 месяцев назад

@@0LoneTech oh wait that's literally all that I need. Brb gonna go replace all my flatpaks with nix packages. Screw flatpak

@mathgeniuszach 6 месяцев назад

Wow, I didn't realize nixos surpassed the AUR in packages. I've been considering swapping to NixOS for a bit now because of reproducability (I've kept an arch install script around to try to mimic it in the past), but the main things stopping me from switching have been a lack of certain packages and having to rewrite my whole configs. I'll probably still wait until I get a new laptop to switch, but this is neat!

@siocdenarf1010 6 месяцев назад

Hello! I have always the same trouble with NixOS presentations: What about security updates? Who do the package validations, and security follow up? No dependencies? ok but what about bug fix / security patch on these libraries and softwares you have in many of those "packages"? I am really curious about that and I am surprised it is never explained. For me, security patches / bug fix are as much important as things you said as main advantages of that distro.

@olfreg6685 7 месяцев назад

On 2:31 , I think, again I think. If you have tried everything, which I guess you did and nothing worked that means its just the problem of version mismatch. Basically there will be 2 linux init files in your /boot and /boot/efi (if you have conf it this way). Last updated version should be matched with this files. Check with ' file /boot/* ' - prints the file type and also in ( if ) /boot/efi check 'pacman -Si linux' Basic check - when you are in emergency mode, check the linux version ' uname -a ' if it shows outdated version than what you updated to, then it the just the problem of version mismatch. Just update those files, with current version by copying or mkinitcpio by ( by arch-chroot into the system ) into the correct location with correct parameter provided. The error msg tells that its not able to mount this file system vfat in the first place, why - because its not able to find the correct driver. But in this case actually the driver is present there in your /efi partition's archlinux. Its just got confused because of the version of linux init which has the basic file mounting drivers it was looking for could not find. Just try it next time if you ever encounter this problem. Hope you do not get frustated next time.

@NoBoilerplate 7 месяцев назад

You're very kind to help, I of course did all these things. After trying everything, in hindsight I believe the root cause was an ssd clone I did of my old installation. Booting the cloned drive while the old one was still in my machine, causes the kernel update mechanism in arch to partially update my efi, out of sync with the kernel. This problem and all others can never happen to me on nixos. I'm never going back :D

@felixjohnson3874 7 месяцев назад

2:25 uh, I was able to find posts (with plain-english fixes) within seconds based on that error mounting /efi unknown filesystem vfat error. Is this an unrelated screenshot or did those fixes not work?

@DeuxisWasTaken 6 месяцев назад

I like home-manager, it just extends the NixOS declarative single place configuration thing to my user settings. I have my ZSH, GIT and whatnot config there.