Yea it’s definitely a jungle haha, it also seems they’re changing things up a bit with where the most recent docs might be hosted

https://search.nixos.org/

so, if you searched for vscode in that link, then click the “NixOS Configuration” button, you can see

  environment.systemPackages = [
    pkgs.vscode
  ];

or if you’re using the with convention to factor out the pkgs object/contextual keyword(not sure if that’s the right name)

  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    vscode
  ];

for zsh, just having this in your configuration.nix should work https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Command_Shell

programs.zsh.enable = true;
users.defaultUserShell = pkgs.zsh;

Again, these values should be inserted after the function definition of your configuration.nix

{ config, pkgs, ...}:
{
   # Things get inserted here typically
   imports = [ ./hardware-configuration.nix];
   environment.systemPackages = [pkgs.vscode];
}

for example.

Something I’ve noticed from developing on nix, When the headaches of nix appear, the solution might be harder, but I usually end up with a better solution than what I was going for before. Some examples:

• My resume is compiled in Latex. I tried the pdflatex package in nix but it gave rendering issues. Then the nix community recommended tectonic and i’m getting better compilation times, logging, clean up…

• PIP is a garbage package manager, and it’s garbageness sometimes makes native python development a headache in nixos. However, using poetry2nix, not only could I define development environments, it was also ready for packaging on PIP

Sometimes you might want to separate some parts of your configuration away from your global system config at /etc/nixos/configuration.nix. That’s nix-shell, nix-develop, nix-build, and flakes are for. I’m not a pro at flakes yet, but I think I got the gist, here’s an example of when I wish I could have used a flake:

I use discord but discord itself is garbage. Vesktop is a better 3rd party client for discord. Unfortunately, I had to remove it from my configuration.nix the last few weeks because one of its dependencies wasn’t packaged right, causing my entire system to not build. If I had used a flake, I could have isolated that dependency from the rest of my build, while still tracking its integration with my system. I believe this could have allowed me to update the rest of my system, while still defining the errenous app as part of my system. Flakes are supposed to be more reproducible as well, since they require sha256 git commits, whereas other package managers only ask for a subjective version number

There’s a lot to learn with nix but even if I don’t stick with it long term I feel like It’s making me a smarter software engineer since a declarative/functional paradigm tends to match the natural language more. It also is the most restrictive design paradigm, which means it’s brief but so simple it can be hard to understand as a consequence. Since it’s so restrictive, it’s also a subset of all other paradigms. You declare what you want, ideally, you don’t have to set anything up. I never had an easier time getting cuda drivers for ML Training setup than on NixOS because of this

Something I enjoyed doing, was setting up my user profile to let me ssh in only with whitelisted ssh keys, as well as setting up a systemd script to handle some start up routines on my OS. I think that can be a gentle introduction to how you can configure other parts of your operating system. I’m going to try and set up a CI/CD/CT pipeline with it next I believe

Edit: The next thing I need to do as well, is consolidate my user configs with the home manager functionality. I use a KVantum Theme engine on top of plasma, and while those apps are installed in my system, the configuration of which theme to automatically load should be integrated with the text config aspects of nixos. Currently, I “Imperatively” configured those by “Opening the app and clicking”, which will get erased/not be reproducible if I ever rebuild my nixos on a new computer

Another funny thing with functional programming… sometimes the fix is as simple as

sound.enable = true;

Even though I had pipewire enabled as a service and everything, that one line needed to be there haha

I’m using NixOS partly as a dev machine, but mostly for consumer OS stuff like gaming, YouTube, social media…

What are you trying to use it for? From the consumer perspective, I feel like modifying configuration.nix would be the majority of what I need. It’s like ninite if you’ve used that to setup a Windows machine, but it can be preloaded on your OS and you can configure everything, not just which programs are installed

If you’re trying to setup dev environments, I think what gets weird is how many ways there are to do similar things, like nix develop, nix build, nix shell…

Ruby was recommended to me by my comparative programming languages professor. I haven’t picked it up, but there were memes that this professor was so good at programming he was secretly built by the university in C++ to teach students how to write better code.

Gimme a wedge pillow to keep my ass above my head and I’m in

I don’t mind using discord, but I think it’s best to consolidate all project management communications on a single platform

Thanks, I think I finally got it, but I think I’ll need to switch to flakes if I want to be able to install say numpy==1.10.0 instead of latest (is there a way to specify which python package version should be installed in mkShell?)

Does this explanation make sense?

{ pkgs ? import  {} }:
pkgs.mkShell {
  packages = with pkgs; [
    (python310Full.withPackages 
                        (python-pkgs: with python-pkgs;
                          [numpy pandas requests]))];
  #inputsFrom = [ pkgs.python310Full ];
}

To derive this ephemeral shell…

use a package manager defaulted from nix packages: {pkgs ? import {} }:

Make an ephemeral shell with programs located in the package manager: pkgs.mkShell {

Define the set of installed packages in the ephemeral shell

 packages = with pkgs; [
    (python310Full.withPackages # Include python310 in the set of installed packages
                        (python-pkgs: with python-pkgs; # not entirely sure what's going on here, is python-pkgs a predefined arg? fails with nativeBuildInputs if this isn't here 
                          [numpy pandas requests]))]; # the pip packages to include

Every time I help another Linux user, I grow one more hair towards my wizard beard

It’s gonna be a long transition haha, but I’ve learned a lot about OSs over the years just using CLI in Ubuntu, I’m looking forward to nix as something I’ll struggle with for the next few years haha

I’ve been running an Ubuntu base for years, but windows kept overwriting the boot loader so I finally cracked. Been wanting to switch to Debian for a while and nix seemed desirable for its functional design paradigm

Doesn’t the production label make most of the money from sales anyways?and the artist makes more from live performances

IReal pro is an excellent app, there’s a built in forum for getting user uploads for the chord backing track of most any song. It’s mainly centered around jazz but there’s pop standards as well.

There’s a UI element you can press that lets you represent the chords in guitar tabs or as sheet music in a karaoke like display.

It’s certainly no replacement for playing with other musicians, but it is extremely useful for practicing

Because people who don’t live in the Levant caused these issues 80 years ago, and actively fund it today

…which company? asking for a friend

I haven’t really used nix, but I like what I read about it. I see a lot of critiques around it’s limited community, and therefore documentation/support

Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to your question. But if there’s a relevant repo for the OS, you might be doing the community a favor by asking in the GitHub repo

Whenever EA or Ubisoft releases a half assed game with stellar marketing