Re:Nix – Death by a Thousand Cuts
by VTimofeenko on Saturday January 11, 2025 @08:35PM
(#42670449)
For those pesky random executables there's a couple of escape hatches -- buildFHSenv and nix-ld. This is also predicated on good provenance of the executables in question. One should probably not even ldd sketchy binaries:
steam-run seems to be able to run everything. It uses bubble wrap to keep the OS isolated and add /usr/bin stuff most exes want.
Re:Nix – Death by a Thousand Cuts
by SuperSandro2000 on Wednesday January 15, 2025 @11:52AM
(#42713436)
*it won't be in the future because it is no longer the grabbag for everything.
Also linking things to /usr/bin is done by the fhs which uses bubblewrap, not steam-run.
Re:Nix – Death by a Thousand Cuts
by soraminazuki on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @02:16PM
(#42702295)
Even proper packaging is far easier compared to other package managers. Typical distros push users away from packaging their own software, so users end up relying on ad-hoc solutions instead. Nix instead makes packaging easier by having proper tools to abstract away the nitty gritty details.
For random binaries, autoPatchelfHook works miracles.
Every time I see a linux installation with a mess in /opt because it's faster than making a package, I get annoyed.
It wasn’t that bad creating some new derivations my first week with Nixos, I was so used to Arch where I had maybe a handful modified pkgbuilds over a decade.
For better or worse it was a positive experience, especially when you usually already have a pkgbuild to go off of.
I now use distrobox to run random binaries in a container. It's faster and convenient
Re:Nix – Death by a Thousand Cuts
by otabdeveloper4 on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @02:28PM
(#42702487)
> just run random binaries from the internet like it's 1998, bro
That world was fun but I don't want to go back to that place.
Re:Nix – Death by a Thousand Cuts
by 3836293648 on Friday January 17, 2025 @04:20PM
(#42743376)
NixOS literally just broke webcam drivers on alder lake and wake from sleep. That was a huge pain to deal with when updating for the rsync vulnerabilities. And a bunch of other issues.
Thank goodness for perfect rollbacks. I'll take rsync vulnerabilities over a super broken system and try again in a few weeks.
The biggest drawback is really that "random executable from the internet" does not work out of the box. And sometimes you have to spend a lot of time to package something yourself. But all in all It has saved me time and a lot of pain. I dare even say I no longer have a toxic relationship with my OS.