NixBSD

S

sidetone

sidetone said:
NixBSD is a new project that uses a port and package management system that came from NixOS on top of FreeBSD.
news.itsfoss.com

NixBSD: This Project Mixes FreeBSD and NixOS in One!

Wait, what? Two good things in one? What do you mean? Take a look here.
news.itsfoss.com news.itsfoss.com
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs is the official website.

There are mentions of a nixbsd in these forums, but this is not the same project. That meant Unix related operating systems including BSD, which is https://nixbsd.wordpress.com/.
Click to expand...

congratulations for discover this, but lost me in "a purely-functional Linux distribution"
 
Alain De Vos said:
If i'm correct for NIX, all configuration is in lisp.
Question : What is the added value as compared to plain-FreeBSD?
Click to expand...
The configuration is written in the Nix language

NixBSD would give the same advantage that NixOS does on the Linux world. You would have a declarative system where you can administrate and configure your system based on a strict formula. This is very good for reproducing it on other systems or having full transparency of how your system is configured or what you did. You also have extra advantages from this, like a packaging system that is immune to dependency hell, nix shells for using temporary packages, environment variables and environments you want to discard later, etc

Having a FreeBSD equivalent of NixOS is very good, though it will only cater to a niche, but a niche that really likes this kind of thing.
 
Alain De Vos said:
If i'm correct for NIX, all configuration is in lisp.
Question : What is the added value as compared to plain-FreeBSD?
Click to expand...
I used Nixos for a while,
i think its own language rather lisp

someone described the nix language as being the love child of haskell and bash

The reason i stopped using nix is because the project doesnt update the documentation straight away
when they change how things work

So you have a config setup then it suddenly stops working
and then you have to look on the nix forum to try and find how to fix it

Trying to google for nixos information is a nightmare you get very few results

the issue is you might have software that has a bug and you have a simple fix that works on linux and unix

but you cant apply the fix to the nix version and you have to spend hours if not days
trying to find the nix fix for something that should take 5 minute to fix

also it doesnt follow the standard unix or linux file structure
it only has /bin/sh for scripts

which means you have to change all the shebangs in your non sh scripts like awk
or any other language because the standard file path for the binaries doesnt exist

nix has a main config file which defines how the system is set up
and you can specify a list of applications to install in that file

but then it has to rebuild the whole system every time you update an application

so you have to use another program called home-manager which has its own config files
to specify a list of applications to install

and then your home-manager config stops working because they have changed the syntax
so you then have to spend more time rewriting the config with the new syntax

at which point you begin to question why you are using it all

nix is basically a walled garden
 
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