flake-utils-plus VS nixGL

You don't need channels to use nix-shell or nix-env. You can generate the Nix path and registry from your flake inputs. flake-utils-plus makes this easy with nix.generateRegistryFromInputs and nix.generateNixPathFromInputs.

Use flake-utils-plus to easily define multiple systems in flake.nix.and then use the --target-host flag of nixos-rebuild to deploy it remotely.

If you're trying to handle multiple systems with one config a flake is a significantly better option. I would personally recommend looking at flake-utils-plus and specifically this example config.

I looked at some past threads / examples and saw people recommend flake-utils-plus, but after reading the examples I don't understand how I would get home-manager on Darwin or Ubuntu.

Depending on your specific needs, the channelsConfig (modify arguments passed to Nixpkgs) and overlay tooling in flake-utils-plus may be adequate: https://github.com/gytis-ivaskevicius/flake-utils-plus/tree/...

For flakes you don't have to set up everything manually there are helper libraries, I use flake-utils-plus.

Converting to flakes is not that hard if you use a good library. The documentation is other people's configs, really.

Neat! I've been using flake-utils-plus's implementation until now. https://github.com/gytis-ivaskevicius/flake-utils-plus/blob/master/lib/repl.nix

I use flake-utils-plus based configuration to apply patches on top of nixpkgs where overlays don't suffice.

How can a program accomplish this? by using/doing something like virtualization? emulation? syscall/API translation? e.g. like WINE?

  [1] https://github.com/nix-community/nixGL

Essentially, running stuff that needs GL graphics is a bit funky... There's a workaround called nixGL though.

I think installing Calibre is a good use case for installing Nix (www.nixos.org).

Unfortunately, you might also need https://github.com/guibou/nixGL to run graphical apps under Nix. It's a shell script to use the correct OpenGL library.

Try the NixGL wrapper.

Are you running the Nix package manager on not-NixOS? If so I recall needing NixGL for OpenGL integration.

$ nix-channel --list home-manager https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-22.05.tar.gz nixgl https://github.com/guibou/nixGL/archive/main.tar.gz nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable

Needs a separate program to run GUI applications on non-NixOS systems

IMO the proper solution to this is Nix/Guix, since they have the best of both worlds (sharing libraries where possible, but allowing different versions where needed). Shame that libGL is a mess and as such is difficult to get right in this way, and as such you need hacks like https://github.com/guibou/nixGL for most GUI stuff. That said, people are working on improving the situation.

I get what you mean, but keep in mind that for every distro you're reliant on the community to get nvidia support integrated. Also if you only have few apps that require it, then the nixGL flake is not bad. https://github.com/guibou/nixGL

nix-channel --add https://github.com/guibou/nixGL/archive/main.tar.gz nixgl && nix-channel --update warning: unable to download 'https://cache.nixos.org/v5djb4jw3hg4brdbidqaspin8n8isyq6.narinfo': SSL peer certificate or SSH remote key was not OK (60); retrying in 259 ms these derivations will be built: /nix/store/gm6gq44ivdqgmrsvlsr08d2nqjircgds-nixgl.drv building '/nix/store/gm6gq44ivdqgmrsvlsr08d2nqjircgds-nixgl.drv'... while setting up the build environment: executing '/bin/bash': No such file or directory builder for '/nix/store/gm6gq44ivdqgmrsvlsr08d2nqjircgds-nixgl.drv' failed with exit code 1 error: build of '/nix/store/gm6gq44ivdqgmrsvlsr08d2nqjircgds-nixgl.drv' failed error: program '/usr/bin/nix-build' failed with exit code 100