nixGL VS archbox

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

I also found this project which streamlines the process a little https://github.com/lemniskett/archbox

you mean something like archbox? https://github.com/lemniskett/archbox

If you don't mind the storage penalty, it looks pretty convenient to set up an Arch Linux chroot and use packages from the AUR when you need to: https://github.com/lemniskett/archbox/blob/master/NIXOS_INST...

Nixpkgs itself is several times the size of the base Arch Linux package collection, and by ‘non-unique’ package count, Nixpkgs is also much larger than the AUR. In addition to Nixpkgs, you can find Nix packages in several community ‘overlays’ for Nixpkgs as well as Nix's own user repositories.

You can check to see whether everything you currently use/need is conveniently available for NixOS in a comprehensive-ish way through the combination of these two web search tools:

• for Nixpkgs/NixOS: https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=21.05

• for NUR: https://nur.nix-community.org/

NixOS also includes native Flatpak support.

Fwiw, packaging most things for Nix is very easy. I left Arch in ~2010 because at the time the package management stack and default repos on Arch basically sucked compared to most distros I'd used and liked, and from then on I decided that if I wanted software that wasn't in my distro's repos I'd just package it myself. After taking a little time to learn the tools on whatever distro I was using, I never missed Arch or the AUR. Compared to other distros, packaging normal software from source is usually exceptionally easy on NixOS.

If I were you I'd just dive right in and hit Nix's channel on Matrix with the Nixpkgs manual in hand if I found something I wanted to use that wasn't already packaged. But you can fall back on the options outlined above.