nixops VS nonguix

As far as I know, it’s still about [0]. I’ve had a better experience with deploy-rs though [1] - or even just using nixos-rebuild to target the remote machine.

[0] - https://github.com/NixOS/nixops

For example Nix can already replace ansible, packer, cloudformation[1], dockerfiles.

Nix can also ship the nixpkgs as an oci image (e.g. docker image), vm image, iso, or if you're able to: as a nixos configuration. Tools like nixops can allow you to deploy many machines and have their behavior exactly specified, and the configuration can be version controlled. NixOS configuration can be thought of as congruent configuration management, where many other tools give you many less guarantees about configuration drift and reproducibility.

There are 4 tools I'm taking into consideration right now, but every suggestion is welcome: 1. deploy-rs - I don't know anything about it, heard about it like a day or two ago 2. NixOps - the official one, I don't know what to think, but I have concerns about Flakes compatibility 3. morph - I understand this as "NixOps, but better", no more toughs. 4. colmena - seems to be pretty straightforward with quite nice docs

I'm still relatively new to NixOS, having switched all my personal systems over to it this spring/summer. I don't have a detailed answer to your question, but I believe NixOPs is the canonical way to do what you're describing in production/at scale:

https://github.com/NixOS/nixops

https://nixos.org/nixops/manual/

Nixops is specifically made for purposes like yours.

Well, everyone of course! But especially devops, developers, power-users, and ricer folks. Due to the declarative and purity aspect of nixpkgs, all builds and configurations can be version controlled, cached and shared. NixOS can easily be extended to produce docker images, vm images, or even distributed deployments. You can also write reproducible multi-node integration tests. Tinkerers! Love playing around with the latest desktop manager or modifying builds? Nixpkgs allows you to modify any package you wish to, locally! Nixpkgs is actually a source distribution but its guarantees around purity and reproducibility are so strong that you can get a binary cache "for free".

You could use NixOps[0] for Nix but I'm not sure you can directly compare Terraform and Guix/Nix? My set up involves Terraform for infrastructure and Nix for provisioning, and it's working for me so far.

[0] https://github.com/NixOS/nixops

I'll have to read more about NixOps though, I had kind of forgotten that it existed!

Kind of off topic, but I would love to have NixOps (https://github.com/NixOS/nixops) as an abstraction layer for every type of cloud service, and not just virtual machines (e.g. queues, object storages, etc).

There is Terraform and Ansible, of course, but Nix seems like it could combine the strengths of both of them.

I use the nonguix channel for non-free stuff https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix. It has the mainline linux kernel (instead of the free linux-libre), proprietary drivers and a bunch of other proprietary stuff.

Guix has these things called "channels" containing package definitions. They're actually just git repositories. nonguix was made to have nonfree stuff. It has a lot of stuff including the mainline linux kernel.

https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix you can use non free software if you need to. But the project itself is a gnu project and as such should not encourage users to use non free software.

I think Guix approach is good, community helps with open-source packages, some third-party manages the non-free channels. And they are as easy to use

https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix

There are flatpacks, snaps, appimages, PPAs, channels... why would you except a linux distro maintainer to work for free for a billion dollar company? Testing and maintain their software

My background consists of using/developing Guix, openSUSE/SUSE as well of OBS. I'm a co-maintainer at nonguix, where we provide non-free software which is not allowed at upstream Guix. We even run our own little build service, called Cuirass. This softwore is developed mostly by https://www.reddit.com/user/mothacehe/ :)

$ guix describe Generation 22 May 15 2022 19:02:44 (current) guix 9860c90 repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git branch: master commit: 9860c90e8e5362e0e843efbd45f4563b9746a196 guix-gaming-games 9924ad0 repository URL: https://gitlab.com/guix-gaming-channels/games.git branch: master commit: 9924ad0a66f98ea1b538761fd49521acf4f689a3 flat 094746c repository URL: https://github.com/flatwhatson/guix-channel.git branch: master commit: 094746c1e2e90f2df1e598ab1fd0abb4d75ce84d nonguix 1de0c32 repository URL: https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix branch: master commit: 1de0c32142c54bc73af5556d5e45c77152b31f0f

Thanks for the link. Although I was just planning to follow the steps in the https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix repo.

You'll want to read about "channels" which are additional software repositories you can include in Guix from anywhere, There are other channels, but the main one for non-free is https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix

Even GNU Guix System (which is a fully libre, FSF approved distro) can be used to install non-free packages. All you have to do is add the nonguix repository.