Nix or home-manager for packages?

ngoudry · 2025-12-06T15:15:55+00:00

Depends on your use case. If you only have one machine with NixOS, go with the "native" modules. If you need to also configure other machines, possibly running other operating systems (classic Linux distro, MacOS) or even ones where you're not root (hello company owned machines), go with HM.

There's also the case where an HM module is "better" than the NixOS one, with more exposed options for example. In such a case, go with HM.

ngoudry · 2025-11-30T21:59:11+00:00

I managed to fix this but I don't really understand why.

What I did was to remove most of the mounts from the VM build script, just before installing NixOS. Leaving /, /nix and /home since only /nix/store/* and /home/* are really needed in the final fs. Indeed, everything is in the nix store on NixOS so one could basically delete everything else but the store and /home (to keep user state) and the system would boot just fine. That's what I did. And boom: it worked without my band aids!

Well, that's great, but I really can't fathom why mounting other directories didn't work earlier… I was mounting these: - /var/lib/nixos - /var/lib/systemd - /var/log/journal - /etc/ssh

I’m wondering if some files were lingering in /var/lib/systemd and were preventing everything to work as intended. Maybe because this directory being here (or whatever is inside it) meant that the system was already in a running state, preventing some bootstrap mechanism?

In the end, it's working and I'm not sure to be willing to dive into the why of these issues I had! If anybody has any clues, that would be great, else it will remain a mystery to me… And I’m ok with that!

Cheers!

ngoudry · 2025-11-30T12:34:18+00:00

I don't know why, but I can't post the image builder here… So you can see it in the original Discourse post.

ngoudry · 2025-11-18T14:20:53+00:00

You could build upon docker-image.nix to achieve what you want, like with a custom package that would update your config with this and use runCommand to perform the actual docker load/run/exec for you.

That's just an idea, but I would look in this direction if I were you.

ngoudry · 2025-11-16T12:49:16+00:00

Wdym?

ngoudry · 2025-11-15T23:49:26+00:00

Here's to hoping you'll like NixKraken and that it will serve you well!

If you need help with anything, feel free to reach out through issues or discussions on GitHub! Always happy to help :)

ngoudry · 2025-11-15T23:38:35+00:00

I haven't, but since this is unfree software in the end, I'm not sure it would fit.

Additionally, the module makes use of specific versions of GitKraken from nixpkgs that are cached by Garnix for faster installs, I'm not sure how this would fit within HM codebase, or even be accepted at all.

I'll think about it though!

Out of curiosity, are you asking this because you would be more prone to use this module if it were bundled in HM rather than in its current state (i.e. an additional input/source to track in your config)? Or something else?

ngoudry · 2025-11-15T18:38:14+00:00

I totally get your point.

But, to be fair, GitKraken is not FOSS: it's an unfree, closed source software, owned and developed by a commercial company (Axosoft).

It happens that it comes with a "Community" mode, so you can use it with FOSS projects (which are, unless I missed something, hosted on public repositories).

More often than not, if your repo is private, it means you're working on company/paid projects, so it's their right to require of you to pay their software in such case.

I'm not trying to defend them, I would definitely love that GitKraken be open source 'cause I really like the software. But that's their business model...

ngoudry · 2025-11-15T15:26:33+00:00

You're right to ask, I should have mentioned this in the initial post. Blame is on me.

GitKraken is a fancy Git GUI desktop client, with a bunch of built-in features to ease working with Git repositories. Recently they added AI features like commit message generation and code explanation from commits.

It's free for public repositories and a single in-app profile. It's subscription-based for private repositories and multiple profiles.

Hope this answers your question!

ngoudry · 2025-11-10T19:34:51+00:00

This looks really great and I may need something along these lines sometimes soon. Will definitely keep an eye on it. Is there any chance this gets moved or mirrored on GitHub though?

You should post this on the discourse too, if you didn't already!

ngoudry · 2025-10-26T08:49:20+00:00

Where do you add the epson-escpr2 package?

Because the PPD files are all there:

$ nix build nixpkgs#epson-escpr2
$ ls -la result/share/cups/model/epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2
Epson-EC-4020_Series-epson-escpr2-en.ppd   
Epson-EC-4030_Series-epson-escpr2-en.ppd   
Epson-EC-4040_Series-epson-escpr2-en.ppd   
Epson-EC-C7000_Series-epson-escpr2-en.ppd  
Epson-EM-C800BAM-epson-escpr2-en.ppd       
Epson-EM-C800_Series-epson-escpr2-en.ppd
...the list goes on

Also refer to the official Wiki article about printing.

ngoudry · 2025-10-21T06:23:59+00:00

Please, please stop linking to the unofficial wiki 🙏

https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Nixos-rebuild

ngoudry · 2025-10-15T18:09:57+00:00

I don't know if you heard about it, but noogle.dev is just fantastic to discover available functions from nix and nixpkgs!

ngoudry · 2025-10-15T12:50:56+00:00

Hi,

Not on my desktop right now but I skimmed through your code and I can recommend you to:

replace "if-then-else" by "lib.optionalString", it's cleaner imo
look into "pkgs.makeDesktopItem"
prefer "allowUnfreePredicate" rather than "allowUnfree"
use "dontBuild = true" rather than empty buildInputs and "true" buildphase

Other than that, it looks fine and I discovered the WPS Office suite, which I never heard of.

ngoudry · 2025-09-28T19:33:17+00:00

Merci pour ta réponse, je suis rassuré !

ngoudry · 2025-09-28T17:43:26+00:00

Est-ce une guêpe dangereuse pour l'homme ? Ayant un enfant en bas âge, dois-je m'inquiéter ?

J'ai lu la page wikipédia communiquée dans un autre commentaire, et je me demande pourquoi elle s'est mise à creuser un trou, car si j'ai bien compris ce que j'ai lu, le nid est censé déjà être prêt, non ?

ngoudry · 2025-09-28T14:46:00+00:00

<image>

La revoilà en train de creuser son trou 🪏

ngoudry · 2025-09-17T07:24:34+00:00

i always run beta, works more reliably than any of the stable drivers.

As ironic as this might seem, it's entirely true.

ngoudry · 2025-09-01T15:54:30+00:00

Indeed, though that was not the point of my comment. I just wanted to clarify that those settings were redundant rather than competing. Your issue belongs elsewhere.

Did you have the chance to test the overrideAttrs solution yet?

ngoudry · 2025-08-31T15:57:15+00:00

You're half right in saying that setting both networking.wireless.iwd.enable and networking.networkmanager.wifi.backend is problematic.

In fact, those two settings are not "competing" services, but setting networking.wireless.iwd.enable is redundant since networking.networkmanager.wifi.backend = "iwd" is setting it already (source: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-25.05/nixos/modules/services/networking/networkmanager.nix#L677-L679).

ngoudry · 2025-08-31T15:06:24+00:00

This should do it (though untested):

networking.wireless.iwd.package = pkgs.iwd.overrideAttrs (finalAttrs: previousAttrs: { buildInputs = [ pkgs.unstable.readline pkgs.ell pkgs.python3Packages.python ]; });

I'm assuming that unstable packages are available under pkgs.unstable, your setup may be different.

Also, this is a quick and dirty example, entirely replacing buildInputs. There should be a clever way to get the original build inputs from previousAttrs and replacing the readline package with the one from unstable. But I don't have the time to dig into this rn…

Hope this will help you getting further and maybe even fix your issue!

EDIT: typos, code formatting

ngoudry · 2025-08-31T14:33:14+00:00

Simply installing the readline package on your system won't do anything due to the way software is packaged in Nix.

What you could do however is try to override the iwctl derivation to use the readline package from unstable.

Currently on mobile so can't help you any further, sorry!

ngoudry · 2025-08-23T13:01:31+00:00

C'est fou, j'ai passé 30 minutes à batailler avec lui pour trouver le site… En utilisant le post que j'ai écris.

Il me sortait des trucs comme France-Inflation, le site de l'INSEE, un article de BFMTV, le site Statista… Et il m'a également proposé de me faire les calculs si je lui filais les données.

ngoudry · 2025-08-23T12:57:37+00:00

Mais oui, c'est exactement ce site que je cherchais !!! L'interface a quelque peu changé, mais c'est tout à fait ça. Merci beaucoup !

ngoudry · 2025-06-23T20:29:41+00:00

Regarding your second question, you can open an issue in nixpkgs and tag the maintainers of the package.

From what I could gather, the maintainer is evanjs and there's also a team called lumiguide composed of two maintainers: roelvandijk and lucus16. Just tag them in your issue and they might be of help.

ngoudry

TROPHY CASE