Linux

48017 readers

1436 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

127

Why aren't more people using NixPKGs? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

128 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Distro agnostic packages like flatpaks and appimages have become extremely popular over the past few years, yet they seem to get a lot of dirt thrown on them because they are super bloated (since they bring all their dependencies with them).

NixPkgs are also distro agnostic, but they are about as light as regular system packages (.deb/.rpm/.PKG) all the while having an impressive 80 000 packages in their repos.

I don't get why more people aren't using them, sure they do need some tweaking but so do flatpaks, my main theory is that there are no graphical installer for them and the CLI installer is lacking (no progress bar, no ETA, strange syntax) I'm also scared that there is a downside to them I dont know about.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

All of these points are completely correct and paint an accurate picture of the inherent issues with both technologies.

My intent with my earlier comment was to show how flatpaks and appimages were different from traditional package managers at a high level so I could ask what made nixpkgs different from something I felt and still kinda feel is a more accurate comparison which are traditional package managers like apt etc.

The big selling point to me now is that nixpkgs seem to work similarly to virtualenvs from Python which is cool.