nixos-config VS UTM

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With NixOS you declare your entire OS in a script, something along the lines of Ansible or Terraform. This can even go as far as configuring your user settings, with dotfiles, gsettings, or various other things (often the modules will expose settings in the native nix language and write out the yaml/toml/json/whatever else that is required). The idiomatic way to do this is to use the built-in NixOS configuration (under /etc/nixos) to set up system-level things: mounts, drivers, users, system-level packages (e.g. greetd+sway), and things that change rarely. You then use a project called home-manager to manage everything inside your user configuration (including applications you use), which itself uses nix. By separating it like this, I can sync my entire experience between my laptop and desktop with Git.

I am currently flighting using a separate "nix flake" for both, which allows you to pin versions of packages (with a lockfile). It also allows you to easily pull in other repositories. It hasn't really taken off yet, and the NUR (Nix User Repository, analogous to the amazing Arch User Repository) is still in infancy. I'd offer up my nix configs as an example, but I am currently in the "make it work" example. I have been yoinking several great ideas from this fantastic nix repo: https://github.com/ymatsiuk/nixos-config

The main challenge with Nix is that it doesn't have an FHS: there is no `/usr`, `/bin`, and what you would typically expect. The advantage here is that conflicting dependency versions are not a problem. The problem is that you need to either build any binaries yourself, or wrap them in an FHS helper.

Nix has a virtualenv system `nix develop` and it's very powerful, especially for teams.

Silverblue

I have that Magic Keyboard and would love to have the option to run real Linux via https://getutm.app/. The iPad is fully capable of this, but it is a pain because you have to jailbreak it. Ugh.

If you have TrollStore then install the HV version of UTM to try for yourself: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/releases/latest/download/UTM.HV.ipa

Researching a little showed that this is basically what can be expected running x86 emulation and the systems will just be wonky and slow, although it was running flawlessly, just slow.

There seem to be ways to use Rosetta2 inside a VM [0] to then translate binaries but I found no official support or documentation (using UTM+QEMU that was), this would be such a cool feature, at least there are discussions about it [1,2]

- [0] https://mybyways.com/blog/using-rosetta-in-a-utm-linux-vm-wi...

- [1] https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/discussions/4939

- [2] https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/issues/5460

UTM is open source too though: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM#license

UTM makes it easy to set up and manage macOS and Windows virtual machines. This can be especially useful for developers such as Tauri contributors who need to test their applications across multiple platforms, or for those looking to experiment with different operating systems without affecting their primary system.