I used to run NixOS on my main computer for a few months until I encountered some situation that I couldn't resolve using my nix skills. I think I needed to run some software that wasn't on nixpkgs.
Nowadays, I just use nix (the package manager) on top of PopOS.
This has always been the death of any attempt I make at using NixOS. The first time I tried over a decade ago I think it was VMWare Workstation, then CLion or some other Jetbrains package a few years later - things that aren't particularly esoteric to linux users. Completely opposite the experience that I've had with ArchLinux.
Maybe I should give it another shot if ChatGPT can provide better guidance than reading a dozen blog posts, 11 of which are out of date.
Checking nixpkgs now, it looks like the entire suite of Jetbrains tools are well-supported (except for the newest one, Fleet, since it looks like the people who tried ran into some issues they didn't know how to solve), as well as VMWare Workstation.
Coming from Arch, almost every package I want is on NixOS. The couple I can remember that weren't there are Android Studio for Platform (I packaged it myself following the derivation for the regular Android Studio), Obsidian.nvim (which was packaged a week or two after I mentioned it), and there's been a couple smaller tools that I can't remember.
In my experience ChatGPT learns from those 11 out of date blog posts, and merges it all into a totally wrong mess. At least I didn't have much luck with solving nix problems with chatgpt.
For other people in this situation of running Nix the package manager on a non-Nix OS, a nascent Numtide project you may be interested in is system-manager:
The idea is to provide some of the NixOS whole-system management niceties (especially controlling systemd units) but on non-NixOS systems like Ubuntu, in a way that behaves more like puppet/chef/ansible rather than competing with the native package manager.
I ran into this situation when I needed Conda (for work).. But I may have found a solution: Distrobox (Conda expects certain folders in certain places and NixOS folders are all random strings.)
throwup238|2 years ago
Maybe I should give it another shot if ChatGPT can provide better guidance than reading a dozen blog posts, 11 of which are out of date.
tripdout|2 years ago
Coming from Arch, almost every package I want is on NixOS. The couple I can remember that weren't there are Android Studio for Platform (I packaged it myself following the derivation for the regular Android Studio), Obsidian.nvim (which was packaged a week or two after I mentioned it), and there's been a couple smaller tools that I can't remember.
nani8ot|2 years ago
tkz1312|2 years ago
ref: https://repology.org/
mikepurvis|2 years ago
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/github-numtide-system-manager-...
The idea is to provide some of the NixOS whole-system management niceties (especially controlling systemd units) but on non-NixOS systems like Ubuntu, in a way that behaves more like puppet/chef/ansible rather than competing with the native package manager.
teekert|2 years ago