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      <p>In previous emails, <a href="/daily/2024/11/21/one-configuration-language-to-rule-them-all">I've written briefly about Nix</a>. Over the next few days, I want to write more about it and explain the different components of the Nix ecosystem and how I use them.</p>

      <p>Firstly, Nix is a package manager, similar to apt on Ubuntu or homebrew on MacOS.</p>

      <p>It contains over 100,000 packages that can be installed once you've installed Nix and if you're on a Mac, there's nix-darwin to have it manage macOS settings too.</p>

      <p>There are two stable releases a year and a rolling "unstable" version so you can be as stable or up-to-date as you like, or you can mix and match in the same configuration.</p>

      <p>It's easy to add custom packages and apply overrides to existing packages.</p>

      <p>You can have multiple versions of the same package installed at once.</p>

      <p>And <a href="/daily/2024/11/12/why-consistency-and-reproducibility-are-important">because Nix is reproducible</a>, you can get exactly the same configuration over and over again.</p>

      <p>In another email, I'll write about NixOS, but you don't need to use it to use Nix the package manager.</p>

      <p>I used a different Linux distribution when I started using Nix and installed it as a secondary package manager.</p>

      <p>If you're looking for an alternative package manager for Linux or macOS, I recommend giving Nix a try.</p>

              
    format: full_html
    processed: |
      <p>In previous emails, <a href="/daily/2024/11/21/one-configuration-language-to-rule-them-all">I've written briefly about Nix</a>. Over the next few days, I want to write more about it and explain the different components of the Nix ecosystem and how I use them.</p>

      <p>Firstly, Nix is a package manager, similar to apt on Ubuntu or homebrew on MacOS.</p>

      <p>It contains over 100,000 packages that can be installed once you've installed Nix and if you're on a Mac, there's nix-darwin to have it manage macOS settings too.</p>

      <p>There are two stable releases a year and a rolling "unstable" version so you can be as stable or up-to-date as you like, or you can mix and match in the same configuration.</p>

      <p>It's easy to add custom packages and apply overrides to existing packages.</p>

      <p>You can have multiple versions of the same package installed at once.</p>

      <p>And <a href="/daily/2024/11/12/why-consistency-and-reproducibility-are-important">because Nix is reproducible</a>, you can get exactly the same configuration over and over again.</p>

      <p>In another email, I'll write about NixOS, but you don't need to use it to use Nix the package manager.</p>

      <p>I used a different Linux distribution when I started using Nix and installed it as a secondary package manager.</p>

      <p>If you're looking for an alternative package manager for Linux or macOS, I recommend giving Nix a try.</p>

              
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