NIX OS: the BEST package manager on the MOST SOLID Linux distribution

if you have read any comment section on anything vaguely Linux related recently you probably have heard about NYX OS seriously NYX OS is the new Arch when it comes to telling people that you use it and I will admit I was very skeptical about Nix OS it just looked needlessly complex and I couldn't see what the benefits were but after trying it out learning the basics of how it works I am jumping on the next train so let's see what it is how it works how to get started what you'd want to use it and also how to get started with a better remote desktop tool thanks to our sponsor this video is sponsored by Chasm workspaces a fantastic tool to stream operating systems desktops and apps straight to your browser they just released version 1.13 which adds a workspace registry for installing and sharing open source container based images including the Linux server.io collection of web desktops that are now streamed using Chasm VNC additional updates include enhanced Mobile support with Progressive web apps and you can now stop or pause workspaces to restore them later the chasm workspaces Community Edition can be self-hosted but they also have a cloud service if you prefer so to learn more about Chasm workspaces click the link in the description so let's begin with the obvious question what is NYX OS and why should you care NYX OS is a Linux distribution of course and though for some reason I thought it was relatively new it turns out it's actually older than Ubuntu since it started in 2003. it's a fixed release distro with two releases per year but there's also a rolling variant if you prefer by moving to the unstable Channel we'll see how to do that later in the video what NYX os does differently though is that your system when setup is completely and entirely reproducible everything you use is defined in a configuration file that is used to build your system all the services packages options partition layout Hardware everything is in this config file well apart from your user files documents configs and stuff like that you still have to back these up by yourself still it means that if you backup just that file and use it to reinstall your computer or even install nexo OS on another computer you will get the exact same operating system with every user service package and app installed and configured as you like again apart from your personal user documents and Dot files and now you're probably thinking cool beans Nick okay maybe not no one says that you're probably thinking what the hell is this guy talking about this looks weird and complicated and yeah NYX OS is not for Linux beginners at all it's a command line required sort of distro but in short the benefits are really amazing first your system is insanely stable as you can always roll back to a previous configuration or even a previous version of a package or an app second your system can be replicated as is with just one simple file that yes will take you a bit of time to configure exactly how you like and if you're a developer your eyes might be sparkling right now because yes that's one file to replicate your entire development environment and third you can never get into dependency hell packages all declare exactly which versions of each Library they need and these versions are all installed side by side and kept not erased by newer versions which means that if a program needs a newer version of gtk it won't replace your whole main gtk installation and break everything else in the process it will install this new version alongside the older ones that you actually need for other programs nixos is very very hard to break you would really have to do it on purpose and so the use case is I want a system that I'm able to replicate on the same computer when I reinstall or in an entirely other computer with different hardware and I want the best most stable package manager I can find and I'm okay with using the command line and editing text files okay so let's see how you can install NYX OS the process is pretty much identical to what you know you download an ISO they have a gnome one and a plasma one although you can also install other desktops or no desktop at all you burn your live USB as usual and you boot from it normally you get the classic calamares installer and a screen to pick the desktop environment you want to use I went with plasma for a change you can also pick if you want to use non-free software by default it won't and you're done you have a usable system with a graphical desktop it uses X11 by default but there's a Wayland session if you prefer now it's time to configure your system to make it do what you actually want to do and save everything in case you need to reinstall or you want to duplicate that system onto another computer now the basic install will give you everything you need but you might want to go into more detail and to do that there's the main configuration file in slash Etc NYX OS called configuration dot next this file uses its own specific syntax that is entirely functional it describes everything the system uses and with which options from the hardware the bootloader the services the packages the apps the users everything and this config file is then used to build the system that you use every time you make a modification to this file you rebuild the system based on this and the system automatically installs everything you need for that configuration to work which also means that if you give that config file to someone else they'll get the exact same operating system as what you're using by default after my graphical install that file is relatively simple first it includes the results of the hardware scan nexos performs at install to make sure that all the hardware is detected and handled properly then the bootloader options are set with systemd and EFI followed by the hostname enabling network manager the time zone the locals X11 the login manager and the desktop environment comment the various services and my user and its applications and this file is super basic it works for a base system but you can do a lot more with the Nix syntax if I wanted to add something else for example I would like to run a few VMS using virtualbox I could just add the line virtualization.virtualbox.host.enable equals true and I would also like to have G parted part of my main system build so in the config file where my user is defined I'll just add G parted to the list of packages now to make sure that this config is actually applied I can just run a command Nix OS Dash rebuild switch and my configuration will be parsed and the system will rebuild itself using everything in this file it will then enable this new configuration for the currently booted system and make that the boot default and now if I open my menu in KDE I can find G parted and virtualbox both installed and ready to use did you notice how I didn't need to use a graphical app store or a command line package manager that's because since I declared that I wanted this on my system when I rebuilt my system Nix OS automatically fetched those packages and all their dependencies so everything would work well now if I reboot my system I also now have two entries in my bootloader the previous configuration and the new one with my g-potted package and virtualbox these entries are called Generations this means I can always reboot to my previous working configuration if I messed something up which is a very nice safety net and that's the basics of Nyx OS with one single file you declare everything you need the system is built using that configuration to install and configure everything according to what you specified and that config file will always create the exact same system for any user on any device now of course you will have to learn this syntax and the various Services packages and configs you can set in there and it's a lot more powerful than just enabling or disabling things I can add conditions or abstractions to make my file truly portable for other PCS that might not have the same Hardware and don't worry if you mess up the syntax when you run the Nyx OS rebuild command you'll get warnings and errors that tell you what doesn't work and the config won't be built and if you're still worried you can also just make that configuration work for right now but not make it the new boot default which means that if anything breaks you can just reboot and you'll reboot onto the working system of course all of this requires root access to edit the main config of the system but if you don't have root access or if you don't want to add programs to your main reproducible config but you just want to test them out for now you can also install packages as a regular user using the next package manager or you can add flat pack to your config file or run app Images but installing programs will mainly be done using the next package manager which means it's time to learn how to use it learning montage foreign [Music] seconds thanks to the super exhaustive manual that is included in the distribution all that you can find online the next package manager works on any Linux distro but also on Mac OS WSL and more it's pretty easy to use if I want to install for example OBS I will just type Nix Dash on dash IA nyxos.obs Studio the dash I is the argument to install and the capital A is to tell the package manager to install using the specific name of the package instead of looking through the whole repo which is way slower if I want to remove the package I can use Nix Dash on dash e OBS studio and it will be removed note that installing packages with the next package manager doesn't add them to your config file so if you want these packages to be part of your main config your reproducible system you need to add them in the config file instead either for your user or for the whole system and that's about it for the basics of the Nyx package manager next doesn't have a snap D package just yet so there's no snap support oh no what are we going to oh wait you said snaps no that's fine no one cares and as per what is available the next package repos has 80 000 packages which is almost as much as the Aur so chances are you will find anything and everything you need in there okay now let's see how to update the system and all its packages nexos works with channels by default you'll use the stable Channel with tested packages that get security updates only and major feature updates when there's a new release of Nyx OS every 6 months to update you can just run the command sudo Nick's Dash Channel dash dash update this will pool all the latest package versions from the channel your system uses then you run the Nyx Dash rebuild switch dash dash upgrade command and your system will grab every new version of every package and rebuild the system based on your configuration file and this sounds like it should take a lot of time but it doesn't like rebuilding your system after changing your config generally takes like 10 seconds important to note the new version of a package is installed alongside the old one the new versions are the ones that will be used thanks to a simple symbolic link system that always points to the newest version of a package so in your menu you will only see the latest version of an app but this has to use a lot of disk space over time right so fortunately you can clean that up you can run a command to clean up the old Generations the old system builds that you have that you're not using anymore and then run another command to delete all the older versions of packages that have been linked to this version but that you're not using anymore Nix OS isn't a bleeding edge distro so by default on the stable Channel you don't get the latest and greatest packages to get newer packages add the risk of having a less cable system you can switch to the stable Channel they are the latest tested updates and they will also get you access to packages that aren't yet in the stable repos like for example DaVinci Resolve but that's just the tip of the iceberg NYX also has flakes that let you basically provide an entirely configured project that you can download and reproduce on your system it has home manager to create a NYX config file just for your slash home directory and there are tons of options for the next package manager and the Nix configuration file to really tailor everything to your needs so who should use NYX OS then well for developers it's a god-tier distro you can just completely fine tune your config file to have the perfect development environment and then just give that file to all the other developers in your company that will then have the exact same development environment completely set up for workstations you can deploy the exact same system to all your users for someone who just wants a super solid system that can always roll back and that is completely free of dependency hell nixos is also the perfect choice and if you Tinker a lot with your distro your services all the systems you use and you run Nix OS lets you grab that exact configuration and never lose it as long as you back up your one config file next OS is an amazing distribution but not for beginners if you come from the everything is graphical world then you're gonna have a rough time you're gonna need to learn the Syntax for the config file to make the most out of this distribution and you're also going to have to learn how to use the package manager through the command line it's not like it's super difficult but it's still a big barrier If You're Expecting everything to have a graphical app so NYX OS is now the top Contender to replace Fedora 38 on my editing desktop because it will let me completely roll back to a usable system I do not have time to debug anything when I need to edit a video and also I can just save all my programs DaVinci Resolve the NVIDIA drivers everything to the config file so I know that everything will work in the event of a reinstall or if I move to a new editing rig and if you need to move to another computer fortunately there's our sponsor tuxedo makes laptops and desktops that run Linux out of the box all the hardware has been picked specifically to be compatible with Linux you can buy their devices with a variety of popular distros pre-installed or you can just install your own and know that it will work perfectly they have a big range of devices from the smallest most affordable Ultrabooks to a giant workstation a gaming tower a gaming laptop and everything in between every device has a lot of configuration options and a lot of customization options as well with your own logo or your own keyboard layout now they are based in Germany but they ship to most countries in the world and also all their laptops are openable repairable and upgradable including the ram the SSD the battery and even sometimes the wireless car so if you plan to replace your current PC and and you want to run Linux on it stop buying devices made for Windows and hoping that they're going to work with Linux just click the link in the description below and buy a tuxedo PC so thanks everyone for watching the video I hope you enjoyed it if you did don't hesitate to like to subscribe to turn on notifications to write a comment and if you didn't like the video well there's always that thumbs down button and the comment section to let me know why I'm terrible and if you really enjoyed the video and you want to support the channel there are plenty of links in the description to do just that from liberape patreon PayPal YouTube thanks YouTube memberships you know how all of this works so thanks for watching and I guess you'll see me in the next one bye [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 113,507

Keywords: linux, open source, linux distro, linux help, linux tutorial, linux 2023, opensource, linux tips, distro, linux tutorial 2023, NixOS, nix os, nix package manager, what is nix os, NixOS explained, how to use nix os, nix os configuration, nix how to install, best linux distribution, best package manager, nix os is complicated, nix os reproductible, nix build package, nix os for dummies, nix os understand, linux dev, linux code, best linux for developers, best linux for coding

Id: DMQWirkx5EY

Length: 17min 8sec (1028 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/NGB_UF]

Its great to see the bigger Linux Youtubers make content for Nix :) Such a coincidence that it happens 3 weeks after i started with NixOS myself :D

[u/ThomasLeonHighbaugh]

Good that people are coming around but dear God the HYPERBOLE is NAUSEATING

[u/reddigg-eol]

Let's fucking gooooooo

Vamanoooooos!

[u/ABC_AlwaysBeCoding]

It deserves it. Warts and all.

[u/real_random_stranger]

I know that feel - but, like others said: it's about focus (sometimes out of your controll).

If you use Plasma/KDE, the

>> PlasmaConfigSaver <<

Plasmoid [ https://store.kde.org/p/1298955/ ] could be a big help for reproduction, too.

- It seems like that there are some[-times] bugs - but give it a try, before you hope ALL SETTINGS will be save[-d] in the " configuration.nix ". Filesize can be "~300mb" - but many details belongs to it.