Reminder!!! Meeting tomorrow night! Topic: Nix
Just a reminder that we've got a meeting tomorrow night! Date: June 12th, 2025 Time: 7pm Location: Technocopia, 44 Portland st. Worcester MA Virtual Location: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA Topic: Nix Package Manager Presenter: Xavier Ruis Fellow WLUG member Evan White has asked his friend Xavier to speak at WLUG and he's graciously agreed. Xavier Ruis is one of the organizers of the Boston Typescript club and will be giving a talk about the Nix Package manager! https://nixos.org/ Nix is a packaging system that allows for the creation of "declarative builds and deployments" It works on all the distros as well as the NixOS linux distribution. Afterwards we'll head off to dinner to continue the conversation! I hope to see you there! Tim.
"Tim" == Tim Keller via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> writes:
See you all there!
Just a reminder that we've got a meeting tomorrow night! Date: June 12th, 2025 Time: 7pm Location: Technocopia, 44 Portland st. Worcester MA Virtual Location: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA Topic: Nix Package Manager Presenter: Xavier Ruis
Fellow WLUG member Evan White has asked his friend Xavier to speak at WLUG and he's graciously agreed.
Xavier Ruis is one of the organizers of the Boston Typescript club and will be giving a talk about the Nix Package manager! https://nixos.org/
Nix is a packaging system that allows for the creation of "declarative builds and deployments" It works on all the distros as well as the NixOS linux distribution.
Afterwards we'll head off to dinner to continue the conversation! I hope to see you there! Tim. _______________________________________________ WLUG mailing list -- wlug@lists.wlug.org To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave@lists.wlug.org Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ Change Settings: https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ Web Forum/Archive: https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/44PZQY...
Hey guys, What a great meeting last week! A big shout out to Xavier for doing his presentation on NixOS! Hopefully Tim will be able to share the links to the slides and other info. We talked about: NixOS - A tool and environment for building systems in a deterministic manner. Sorta like Ansible, or Puppet, or Chef, or Salt or cfengine (old school!) or Terraform. But with it's own twist on how it keeps a hash pointing at the version you have, so you can mix-n-match tools versions easily. nushell (https://www.nushell.sh/) - a new shell for Linux and MacOS which includes some PowerShell like features. It looks interesting for sure. But maybe this old dog is too stuck in his ways to change direnv (https://direnv.net/) - A way to have your shell environment updated when you 'cd' into a directory, so that you don't have to remember what environment settings your need when you're moving around and doing work. I wish I had this for my engineers back when I was supporting an ASIC design team, they would have loved this. So who's going to present next month? And what are the feelings of those who are remote? Were you able to follow along and enjoy the talk? Doing both in-person and streamed stuff is tough at times, and I feel like we're not paying enough attention to those who try to comment from remote connections. Cheers, John
John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> writes:
What a great meeting last week! A big shout out to Xavier for doing his presentation on NixOS! Hopefully Tim will be able to share the links to the slides and other info.
Yes, thank you. I would like to review the slides.
We talked about:
NixOS
- A tool and environment for building systems in a deterministic manner. Sorta like Ansible, or Puppet, or Chef, or Salt or cfengine (old school!) or Terraform.
I don't know what any of those are. I was comparing it to apt-get, rpm, yumm and, of course guix. I think I heard Xavier say something about teamwork between Nix and guix, which would be good because I don't think we need $2^n$ incompatible package managers. I looked up NixOS, expecting to see a lot of cartoons. Where did those cartoons come from and are they "official"?
And what are the feelings of those who are remote?
I feel lumpy; like a cucumber.
Were you able to follow along and enjoy the talk?
The first half-hour or so was near intolerable, but then the noise stopped and the camera stopped bouncing and all was good. -- Keith
"Keith" == Keith Wright via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> writes:
Keith, I hope you're staying cool!
John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> writes:
What a great meeting last week! A big shout out to Xavier for doing his presentation on NixOS! Hopefully Tim will be able to share the links to the slides and other info.
Yes, thank you. I would like to review the slides.
We talked about:
NixOS
- A tool and environment for building systems in a deterministic manner. Sorta like Ansible, or Puppet, or Chef, or Salt or cfengine (old school!) or Terraform.
I don't know what any of those are. I was comparing it to apt-get, rpm, yumm and, of course guix. I think I heard Xavier say something about teamwork between Nix and guix, which would be good because I don't think we need $2^n$ incompatible package managers.
So think of those tools listed above as the next step up in abstraction to managing groups of packages and entire system level configuration. So I use Ansible and I tell it to install a bunch of packages, and then ansible uses apt or dpkg to do the actual install. Ansible (or terraform, salt, chef, puppet, etc) are all tools for bringing systems into alignment with your specifications. They add/remove packages, make updates to configurations, etc. NixOS is more like apt and rpm, with the idea that (as I understand it) you have a much more reproducable set of packages that are cryptographically proveable to be the same. Not so much from a signed with a key, but more in the form of hashes that track state all the way back to the source package.
I looked up NixOS, expecting to see a lot of cartoons. Where did those cartoons come from and are they "official"?
I don't know. Maybe Xavier or somethinh with the slides can chime in here?
And what are the feelings of those who are remote?
I feel lumpy; like a cucumber.
LOL!
Were you able to follow along and enjoy the talk?
The first half-hour or so was near intolerable, but then the noise stopped and the camera stopped bouncing and all was good.
Yeah, the noise in the usual conference room was crazy. And I just found another tool which I think Xavier was using in his shell. Take a look at 'starship': https://starship.rs/ which I find funky because it requires you to have Nerdfonts (https://www.nerdfonts.com/) installed. Which honestly seems like a step backwards, just like Emojis are a step backward. Yes, it's fun to have and know the meaning (or supposed meaning!) of a special graphical image, but it really feels like we're going back to Egyptian Heiroglyphics. Which means you have to memorize hundreds or thousands of individual characters to make words. And then you still have to join them together into bigger chunks. The power of the Roman (or other smaller alphabets) to me is that you have a smaller number of pictographs or letters to know, which you can string together into larger concepts more easily. This is ignoring language and pronounciation issues of course. Ah well, enough ranting, it's gonna be another scorcher today, so stay cool everybody! John
John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> writes:
Keith, I hope you're staying cool!
I feel lumpy; like a cucumber. Lumpy and cool as a cucumber.
At a previous meeting you showed a black box about the size of a thick book and called it a "desktop computer". I thought a desktop computer was one too big to be a "laptop", but your black box is smaller than my laptop. I forgot the name of that black box. What is it? I suppose it is a "desktop" because it needs a separate screen and keyboard, but what connectors are there? I have several big flat screens that are attached to former computers by odd plugs, and PS/2 keyboards, RJ-45 ethernet plugs. I got the ethernet working with Spectrum internet, but am running out of working computers that plug into it. -- Keith
"Keith" == Keith Wright <kwright@keithdiane.us> writes:
John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> writes:
At a previous meeting you showed a black box about the size of a thick book and called it a "desktop computer". I thought a desktop computer was one too big to be a "laptop", but your black box is smaller than my laptop.
I forgot the name of that black box. What is it?
It's a beelink Mini PC AMD Ryzen 7 5825U system. Here's a link to the Amazon site I got it from. It looks like it's $298 right now, and it comes with 32gb of RAM (expandable to 64gb) and a 500mb NVME disk. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2P486GQ?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title
I suppose it is a "desktop" because it needs a separate screen and keyboard, but what connectors are there?
Yes, it's a desktop. But I think you can even mount it on the back of some monitors if they support the VESA mounting standard. It's damn small.
I have several big flat screens that are attached to former computers by odd plugs, and PS/2 keyboards, RJ-45 ethernet plugs.
So this unit has Display Port, HDMI and I think it will also do display over USB-C port at 10gb/s. It's pretty damn impressive for the cost.
I got the ethernet working with Spectrum internet, but am running out of working computers that plug into it.
This is a cheap way to get a nice fast, quiet, low power unit. It won't do for long sustained tasks, but for browsing, editing, compiling, etc it 's great. Also comes with ethernet.
participants (3)
-
John Stoffel -
Keith Wright -
Tim Keller