this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Nix - An universal package manager (nixos.org)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by howarddo to c/linux
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I think the main pain point of distro hopping is learning a new package manager, I discovered Nix a while ago, it works on every single OS, has the biggest package repo out there. I replaced Homebrew on my mac with it. If this piques your interest, give it a go. Later, you can integrate with Home-manager to manage all of your program config to have a reproducible dev environment on any machine, as described in the tutorial here.

The catch is it's really advanced and got steep learning curve. You can adopt gradually tho. Just get started with nix-shell and nix-env

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[–] Buttons 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A less theoretical advantage is that it can create the exact same environment on both Mac and Linux, and in neither case does it need to replace your primary package manager.

If the whole team is using nix, then the "setup" section of the readme just says "use nix-shell"[1] and that is more than enough for everyone.

[1]: I can't remember if nix-shell is the right command, or not, but in theory nix can create an exact environment on every machine with one command.

[–] sisyphean 2 points 2 years ago

Wow, that’s really useful. I’ll definitely look into Nix!