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Try out Kasm Workspaces to stream desktops, OSes & apps to your browser: https://www.kasmweb.com/community-edition Or you can use KasmVNC, the best open source remote desktop solution on Linux: https://github.com/kasmtech/KasmVNC Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en# 👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/ Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp 👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/ 🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com 🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/XMuQrcYd #nixos #linux #linuxdistro 00:00 Intro 00:36 Sponsor: Kasm, the best remote desktop tool 01:22 What is NixOS? 04:20 Using the configuration file 08:58 Nix Package Manager 11:03 Updating and unstable channel 12:48 Nix is way more than that 14:53 Sponsor: get a PC made to run Linux 15:58 Support the channel NixOS is a Linux distribution that is completely and entirely reproducible. Everything you use is defined in a configuration file that is used to build your system. All the services, packages, options, partition layout, hardware, everything, is in this config file. If you're a developer, your eyes might be sparkling right now: that's right, one config file to exactly replicate your entire development environment. You also can never get into dependency hell. Packages all declare exactly which versions of each library they need, and these versions are all installed side by side and kept, not erased by newer versions. To create your configuration, there's a main configuration file in /etc/nixos, called configuration.nix. This file uses its own specific syntax, that is entirely functional: it describes everything the system uses and with which options, from the hardware, the bootloader, the services, the packages, the apps, the users, everything. This file is then used to build your operating system. Nix will read everything in there, and install, configure, and enable or disable everything, based on what the file contains. So, if you build a nixOS system with the same config file as someone else, you'll get exactly the same system. Once you rebuild your system, there are now multiple entries in the boot loader: one for the new build, and one for the old one: you can always roll back to the previous configuration. Of course, all of this requires root access to edit the main config of the system. But if you don't have root access, or if you don't want to add programs to your main reproducible config, but just test them out for now, you can also install packages as a regular user, using the nix package manager. Or you can add flatpak to your config file, or run appimages. But installing programs will be mainly done using the Nix package manager. The Nix package manager works on any Linux distro, but also on macOS, WSL, and more. It's preverytty easy to use. If I want to install, for example, OBS, I'll just type nix-env -iA nixos.obs-studio The -i is the argument to install, and the capital A is to tell the package manager to install using the specific name of the package, instead of looking through the whole repo, which is way slower. If I want to remove the package, I can use nix-env -e obs-studio, and it will be removed. Note that installing packages with nix-env doesn't add them to the config file. NixOS works with channels. By default, you'll use the Stable channel, with tested packages that get security updates only, and major feature updates when there's a new release of NixOS, every 6 months. To update, you can just run the command sudo nix-channel --update This will pull all the latest package versions from the channel your system uses. Then you run the "nix-rebuild switch --upgrade" command, and your system will grab every new version of every package, and rebuild the system based on your configuration file. Important to note, the new version of a package is installed alongside the old one. The new versions are the ones that will be used, thanks to a simple symbolic link system that always points to the newest version of a package, but you can rollback to an older one. To get newer packages, at the risk of having a less stable system, you can switch to the unstable channel.
A new video from Nick at The Linux Experiment. I’m also sharing the PeerTube version for the sake of trying to expand my use of PeerTube and try to expand my video platform use beyond just YouTube.
I find Nix to be a really esoteric platform that completely inscrutable to a regular user. The people who do use it are extremely hostile to any tools that simplify the experience for the end user like Fleek. I would not recommend it for ANY regular user in any way, shape, or form.
Not my experience. It’s more like benevolent disinterest when it comes to users who can’t hack it on their own. The community is built around devops, functional programmers, as well as the odd enthusiast. Devops love it because it makes their work easier, functional programmer like its semantics and have no issue understanding it, and the odd enthusiast, well, is a hobbyist. If you’re not one of those groups you’re not catered for, it’s as simple as that. And as far as “make things easier for normies” is concerned: Much of that hinges on flakes not just stabilising but everything being switched over to them. The community isn’t going to start bending over backwards over features other people want to see, but not build themselves, but once the infrastructure is in place and it’s easy, heck, why not.
Yeah this is unfortunately true. I love NixOS and I use it constantly but I’m also a professional developer so it’s pretty easy for me. If I weren’t I imagine it would be close to impossible.
Unfortunately it’s very difficult to browse or understand how to use Nix, and the Nix language itself is quite opaque.
I love the results, but I wish it were done in … basically anything other than Nix.
Theoretically there is Gnu Guix, which uses Guile… I have no clue what support for it is like though.
Nice to see a Guix mention! It’s in flux but I appreciate it’s motivation and the hard work being done. One language, kernel agnostic, functional to the core. It’s gained some traction with the reproducible research builds crowd. It always makes me think of The Rise of Worse is Better.
Oh interesting, I haven’t heard of it – is it also for reproducible systems?
It’s basically the nix system but maintained by the Gnu folks. That’s about the extent of my knowledge honestly.
Yeah it’s really nice when you just need a simple package or service setup. Anything not so common or needing a different version of the package can make it 100x more difficult for a regular user to do.