How to install Nix on Fedora Silverblue
How to install Nix on Fedora Silverblue
Today, I wanted to have another go with nix. Previously I just read about it and didn't do anything for a couple of months. Now, I installed nix package manager with very few lines of code and two more to install many packages as described in his post. Installation was very fast on my banana laptop. Until now I used distrobox but I always wondered which distro/ package manager to use. What's your experience with it?
For now, I'll test it. It's super easy to use. It may not be straight forward to a linux newcomer but if you know what you want, e.g. ffmpeg you can just add it with home-manager edit and install it with home-manager switch. So far, I love it!
Dont. uBlue also switched away from it.
My question is, how do I remove it again?
Why?
Removing nix is mostly done by deleting /nix, and removing some systemd services, as well as deleting some nix-related users or groups (iirc nixblkd)
Because almost all of nix happens in /nix it doesn't clutter much of the system.
What does uBlue switching away from it have to do with someone wanting to install it on Silverblue?
He thought it's not possible to install nix on silverblue and another commenter tried to install it on secureblue. It's not possible there. The problem is either somewhere along the supply chain (ublue) or with secure blue
Bazzite user here and I'm using flatpaks whenever possible and distrobox for everything else; which are the benefits of Nix over these?
Nix has more packages , by far. Nix also automatically handles the dependent libraries for each package, which is something you can't do with brew on immutable systems. This means that Nix can install software like espanso, which wouldn't work on uBlue derivatives otherwise.
I really wish the uBlue maintainers would have opted for Nix over brew for that reason. It's not much more difficult to do
nix profile install nixpkgs#package-nameoverbrew install package-name. They could have even aliased it to make it easier.There's a GUI for it too
https://github.com/snowfallorg/nix-software-center
I just click install and it installs to the profile
It's faster than distrobox, it's not within a box but on host, it's easier than most package managers. I still go for flatpak first but for everything else I use nix. Especially for programming environment it looks to be much better than distrobox
Using containers on Linux has basically no performance loss compared to running on the host. They share a kernel and nothing needs to be virtualized (unlike containers on macOS and Windows), so anything you run in a container is basically the same performance as running it on the host.
I still agree though: using Nix is better than using Distrobox for many other reasons.
Nix is useful for CLI packages, which aren't very simple to use through flatpak. It also has far more packages, and is very useful for creating development environments.
Homebrew for CLI. Distrobox needs to be used with Arch, at least the Fedora boxes are literally not possible to system upgrade.
I like it, though I've used it very little (just no need, ATM). They have some decent practice examples to go through, but it's definitely a unique way of thinking about package management.
Until now I used distrobox but I always wondered which distro/ package manager to use. What’s your experience with it?
The answers found below this post resonate with my own experiences.
I do have a question: When you run the
sestatuscommand in the terminal, what string/description is found corresponding to "Current mode"?$ sestatus SELinux status: enabled SELinuxfs mount: /sys/fs/selinux SELinux root directory: /etc/selinux Loaded policy name: targeted Current mode: enforcing Mode from config file: enforcing Policy MLS status: enabled Policy deny_unknown status: allowed Memory protection checking: actual (secure) Max kernel policy version: 33
Thank you for the response!
Current mode: enforcing
This is pretty interesting. If I recall correctly, installing Nix onto Silverblue came with the caveat that SELinux' enforcing mode had to be turned off. But, your terminal output tells another story. I wonder what's up.
FWIW, I had lost interest in installing Nix on Fedora Silverblue for this very reason. However, I might have to revisit my stance on this. Once again, thank you (for reinvigorating my interest in Nix)!
My experience is that nix package configs are tested on NixOS. I used it on other OSes, and I easily encountered misconfigurations and such. The problem is that they are understaffed.
I ended up combining a few package managers due to this, but I'd have preferred to use another manager solely.