nix-darwin VS not-os

Just a shout out to nix-darwin[1]. It is nix, so initial setup is a bit involved. But then it truly makes it easy to configure everything in one place including mac defaults, homebrew apps declaratively and mas apps etc.

There is a sample config in nix-darwin repo[2].

[1] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin

[2] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/blob/master/modules/examp...

https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/tree/master/modules

nix-darwin does similar thing for MacOS

You can use https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin

There are many threads around where you can learn more about this (and why it's complicated...), but https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/issues/1341 and https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/issues/139 seem like two of the most comprehensive.

Nix is pretty usable for both desktops and headless servers. Personally, I even use it on macOS without much trouble.

My system looks like any other install of Ventura, but all of my configuration, ranging from the terminal and VS Code to macOS-specific system preferences and Safari, is done declaratively in Nix [1]. The overwhelming majority of my installed software also comes from Nix packages, with some exceptions for stuff that is not packaged yet (e.g., I have Podman Desktop, the macOS ZFS port, Lulu, yubikey-manager-qt installed through Homebrew -- fortunately nix-darwin [2] also just lets me have an set of brews/casks in my config).

It was been a bit of a nightmare at first since the error messages are kind of horrific, and there can be a lack of good examples/docs on flakes. But I think the weekend worth of time I invested was worth it since I no longer need to rely on hacky shellscripts or remember to manually configure anything.

[1]: <https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager>

[2]: <https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin>

Take a look at nix-darwin, this is what I use. It allows you to configure your system similar to NixOS including globally installed programs.

This — I still use mas and brew —-cask through the nix-darwin module, though. It’s not exactly reproducible, but it’s at least closer to reproducible and declarative.

Hi. I'm new to nix and want to ask if you have an idea how to build an ISO image file of not-os and run it on QEMU virt vanager?

Maybe not-os?

oh oops, I think I was intending to type "crowd source" but I really met "crowd fund".

I do want to finish my FreeBSD cross PR, but is is hard. We already have NetBSD working, including building the kernel, so I think it is better to start there.

I opened https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os/issues/16 because I think that would be the absolute easiest first step, with the fewest moving parts. But I don't know how kernels, even Linux, are packaged into bootable thingies at all.

I also found this: https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os

It's like an OS that has builtin salt/ansible/chef/puppet.

Because Nix language describe the OS instead of what to change/configure it's superior to these tools, and solves the problem that supposedly same machines are drifting apart.

For example if in the CM you tell it to install a package, then change your mind and remove the entry that does it. The package will remain installed.

With NixOS if you remove the package from configuration, it's gone.

I personally really like Nix's building capability. For example I can use it to generate a minimal docker container. It requires some knowledge, but I can also modify compilation options in dependencies (like remove unneeded functionality).

It looks like there's also an option to similarly build lightweight OS images[1]. I haven't tried it yet but looks cool.

[1] https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os

You might want to check out https://github.com/telent/nixwrt and https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os as solutions with similar goals. The former is a promising but yet-unfinished way of using Nix to manage a router, while the latter is a similar way of using Nix to generate an immutable OS image.