not-os VS flake-utils-plus

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.

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.