Nix Journey
After hearing about Nix OS, it seems like an interesting thing to look into. However, I am not currently ready to leave Ubuntu at the moment. Hence, here are my notes on using Nix on Ubuntu.
Installation of Nix
Using official installation steps: https://nixos.org/download/#nix-install-linux
What the script would do:
- make sure your computer doesn’t already have Nix files (if it does, I will tell you how to clean them up.)
- create local users (see the list above for the users I’ll make)
- create a local group (nixbld)
- install Nix in /nix
- create a configuration file in /etc/nix
- set up the “default profile” by creating some Nix-related files in /root
- back up /etc/bash.bashrc to /etc/bash.bashrc.backup-before-nix
- update /etc/bash.bashrc to include some Nix configuration
- back up /etc/zsh/zshrc to /etc/zsh/zshrc.backup-before-nix
- update /etc/zsh/zshrc to include some Nix configuration
- load and start a service (at /etc/systemd/system/nix-daemon.service and /etc/systemd/system/nix-daemon.socket) for nix-daemon
The script is quite intuitive, just read through the prompt carefully, and response as required.
If you want a quick way, you can use my ansible script with the command below:
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ansible-pull https://github.com/BruceChanJianLe/ansible-nix.git -K
Unistalling Nix
This is for multi-user nix, which is the recommended one, likely yours would be this as well.
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# Remove Nix daemon service
sudo systemctl stop nix-daemon.service
sudo systemctl disable nix-daemon.socket nix-daemon.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
# Remove files created by Nix:
sudo rm -rf /etc/nix /etc/profile.d/nix.sh /etc/tmpfiles.d/nix-daemon.conf /nix ~root/.nix-channels ~root/.nix-defexpr ~root/.nix-profile
# Remove build users and their groups
for i in $(seq 1 32); do
sudo userdel nixbld$i
done
sudo groupdel nixbld
Other places where you may want to clean up:
/etc/bash.bashrc/etc/bashrc/etc/profile/etc/zsh/zshrc/etc/zshrc
link: https://nix.dev/manual/nix/2.18/installation/uninstall
Setting Up Experimental Feature
Well, nix commands and flakes belongs to the experimental features, which is what the people are using nix for, so let’s learn how we can enable them.
Basically, there are two ways to enable it. System-wide method, which all users will have the experimental features. Or you could do it per-user based. Let’s explore the method for system-wide first.
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sudoedit /etc/nix/nix.conf
Add this line to it..
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experimental-features = nix-command flakes
For user only method, which is what I would recommend:
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mkdir ~/.config/nix/ -p
vim ~/.config/nix/nix.conf
Add this line to it..
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experimental-features = nix-command flakes
The Package Manager You Want
You can use nix-env as a package manager to install some unavailable packages on your distro, for example, htop-vim which is htop but with vim key-bindings. Let’s see that in action.
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nix-env -Ai nixpkgs.htop-vim
To see what packages you have installed, you can query it like so:
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nix-env --query
To uninstall a package, you can run the following command:
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nix-env --uninstall htop-vim-unstable
You may notice that the unstable keyword, it means that the package is coming from the unstable channel or repository in the Nix ecosystem. In the Nix package management system, there are multiple channels (repositories) that provide packages. The most commonly used ones are:
- Stable: This channel provides well-tested, stable packages that are considered to be production-ready.
- Unstable: This channel includes newer packages and versions that are not yet fully tested or guaranteed to be stable. It can contain packages that are still under development, may have unresolved bugs, or may change frequently.
Summary
In Summary, there is really more to learn than what we see here! I will share more along the way as we continue this journey together. Until then, keep learning!
Reference
- https://tech.aufomm.com/my-nix-journey-use-nix-with-ubuntu/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwEIXIjLTNs