HN

Comments (129)

• Menu

  ronef
  For anyone reading this and jumping to a broader conclusion: the Nixpkgs core team disbanding does not mean Nixpkgs or Nix is dying. It does mean that this particular structure was not sustainable, very important contributors burnt out and we need to do better, faster. We need to continue learning from this and continue building a stronger ecosystem that prioritizes the contributors who are the only reason any of this is possible.Personally, I'm sorry and grateful. Sorry that it ended in core folks being burnt out. Grateful since they did some of the most amazing work, more than anyone can imagine two people doing.
• Menu

  stingraycharles
  “Our experience is that the Steering Committee as an institution lacks a native instinct for the delegation envisioned by the constitution, while also not being sufficiently engaged and cohesive to handle individual decisions at those levels itself.”This is an almost poetic description of micromanagement. I really like Nix and have been running it as my main OS for several years in the past ~ 10 years.I don’t think the issues they have are unsolvable, it just appears that the governance model they’re trying to have is not working out, and it’s very difficult to roll back.
• Menu

  klodolph
  There was a sweet spot in like 2024 when it seemed like everything was possible with Nix, but now it seems like everything “experimental” is permanently so (like flakes), packages I care about are not as fresh as I want, I have no mental recall for Nix commands…Meanwhile, my company is using Nix for everything heavily internally. Everyone gets their dependencies via Nix unless you are like using PAM or something.Reminds me of Bazel, in the way that it gets adopted by companies with developer support teams (because it solves real problems) but feels frustrating for us ordinary folk. Nixpkgs is kind of a critical part of “ordinary folk” and with the core team disbanding, I feel like my personal moves away from Nix (for projects) are proving correct.
• Menu

  ishanz
  Nix package manager: correctly resolves dependency hell for your entire OS.Nix governance: still hasn't resolved dependency hell for humans apparently.
• Menu

  aliasxneo
  I really don't think these issues are necessarily "systemic" in the sense that they've been ongoing for the last decade. I _was_ a long-time contributor until about two years ago when certain actors came into the community and started making a bunch of unnecessary drama. Since then I've seen some long-time friends in the community either slowly drop out or simply get ran out by a mob with pitch forks.
• Menu

  vehemenz
  I’m not saying it’s decisively correlated, or anything on its own, but there sure are a lot of anime avatars in this community.
• Menu

  alberth
  Can someone explain the ramifications of this to those of us not informed.I’m in the process of about to deploy Nixos to server workloads, but am now hesitant because I don’t understand these ramifications.
• Menu

  soupbowl
  After being a heavy user of NixOS, I quit using it due to the communities instability, I don't trust it.
• setheron
  I dunno about all this hullabaloo. I'm at https://nix.vegas/ having fun and using Nix.https://imgflip.com/i/aye90c
• Eueudhsbsj32
  Hopefully a new governance structure will emerge and allow for a better path forward.As a layman who has only used AI to package a couple things on NixOS for personal use, I would think that LLM agents are perfect for taking over most of the nixpkgs workflow.
• Menu

  lrvick
  Anyone looking for a full source bootstrapped, multi-party-signed, container native, and deterministic alternative to nix, check out https://stagex.tools https://codeberg.org/stagex/stagex
• Larrikin
  Nix sounded great, but actually trying to use it for personal use felt like a constant time sink. LLMs made it seem like their bespoke language could be side stepped and one could get all the benefits of the ideas without the time sink. But now they have drama, so I hope someone runs with the idea but for humans and possibly LLMs.
• Alien1Being
  Sounds like our decision to avoid Nix was wise in retrospect...
• Menu

  garn810
  Ah, yearly I hate/love nix post..I tell you what. Ever since I migrated my dev workflow to nix package manager (and home manager for system depa), my life became simpler like 10 timesI can configure any macos machine in like 20 mins (I use Determinate)
• Menu

  QwenGlazer9000
  Honestly after seeing the last election results I knew bad things were coming. The worst of the drama instigators managed to get elected.
• Menu

  talentedcoin
  Why is the Nix community such a dumpster fire?
• anon
  undefined
• Menu

  vasco
  Even just reading this has more bureaucracy than at a company with hundreds of people. Holy hell some projects turned open source into committees and committees to decide what committees are needed.
• Menu

  internetguy
  will nixpkgs still get updates? how will maintenance work (i am not familiar at all with the nix ecosystem so maybe this is a dumb q)
• darkwater
  So, looks like that being a good manager and serving it is no that easy for a good engineer in the end. (I'm not snarking at Nixpkgs core team, just at the many HN readers there that hate engineering managers in general just because they had some bad experience personally)
• Menu

  andersonpico
  All the posts about nix always go something like:1. the "I used nix once/some time ago but I realized it's stupid/hard/whatever"2. anime pfps/furries/trans/woke are bad3. complaining about CoC/governance/etcIrrespective of whatever the posted article is about relating to this technology. This is one of those threads.Nix seems to have one of the worst discussion quality around here. Rust threads are similar (though they got better recently), specially on the negative unrelated comments side, but seem to have much more engaged people. Maybe Anubis has a similar ratio. I wonder why?
• icase
  lol i can’t wait to hear the lunduke show about this one
• shevy-java
  Let's not sugarcoat it too much: NixOS is dying.Also, we see censorship running supreme again:"This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden"People need to stop censoring everything, seriously.NixOS going downwards also coincides with the rise of AI. AI slop really puts stress onto so many projects now.
• Alien1Being
  [dead]
• iwontberude
  [dead]
• zb3
  [flagged]
• Menu

  periodjet
  [flagged]
• anon
  undefined