nixGL VS nixos-generators

How can a program accomplish this? by using/doing something like virtualization? emulation? syscall/API translation? e.g. like WINE?

  [1] https://github.com/nix-community/nixGL

Essentially, running stuff that needs GL graphics is a bit funky... There's a workaround called nixGL though.

I think installing Calibre is a good use case for installing Nix (www.nixos.org).

Unfortunately, you might also need https://github.com/guibou/nixGL to run graphical apps under Nix. It's a shell script to use the correct OpenGL library.

Try the NixGL wrapper.

Are you running the Nix package manager on not-NixOS? If so I recall needing NixGL for OpenGL integration.

$ nix-channel --list home-manager https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-22.05.tar.gz nixgl https://github.com/guibou/nixGL/archive/main.tar.gz nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable

Needs a separate program to run GUI applications on non-NixOS systems

IMO the proper solution to this is Nix/Guix, since they have the best of both worlds (sharing libraries where possible, but allowing different versions where needed). Shame that libGL is a mess and as such is difficult to get right in this way, and as such you need hacks like https://github.com/guibou/nixGL for most GUI stuff. That said, people are working on improving the situation.

I get what you mean, but keep in mind that for every distro you're reliant on the community to get nvidia support integrated. Also if you only have few apps that require it, then the nixGL flake is not bad. https://github.com/guibou/nixGL

nix-channel --add https://github.com/guibou/nixGL/archive/main.tar.gz nixgl && nix-channel --update warning: unable to download 'https://cache.nixos.org/v5djb4jw3hg4brdbidqaspin8n8isyq6.narinfo': SSL peer certificate or SSH remote key was not OK (60); retrying in 259 ms these derivations will be built: /nix/store/gm6gq44ivdqgmrsvlsr08d2nqjircgds-nixgl.drv building '/nix/store/gm6gq44ivdqgmrsvlsr08d2nqjircgds-nixgl.drv'... while setting up the build environment: executing '/bin/bash': No such file or directory builder for '/nix/store/gm6gq44ivdqgmrsvlsr08d2nqjircgds-nixgl.drv' failed with exit code 1 error: build of '/nix/store/gm6gq44ivdqgmrsvlsr08d2nqjircgds-nixgl.drv' failed error: program '/usr/bin/nix-build' failed with exit code 100

https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators

Those Linode instructions are about installing an OS from an installation ISO from Linode's rescue mode. -- I'd consider that more a 'plus' to Linode that you get to be able to install whatever unsupported Linux on Linode's VMs. But, of course it's not as smooth as the officially supported images.

Sibling comment mentions that NixOS provides ways to build VM images (e.g. https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators has a generator specifically for Linode).

Another option is to use nixos-infect, which will replace a Linux distribution with a NixOS distribution. https://github.com/elitak/nixos-infect

> At that point, I feel like all of the repeatability gains are gone. If I want to spin up a fresh server, I have to read a guide and set stuff up by hand?

Just as with ansible, "git pull to deploy". You'd keep a copy of your NixOS configuration.nix somewhere else, and would be able to apply it later.

> it really does let me just get a new VPS and deploy to it very fast

Using a tool you're familiar with to get the job done is going to be faster than learning to use a tool you're unfamiliar with.

I believe much of the use of NixOS is for hobby stuff, and for personal machines. (c.f. "In what environments do you use Nix", Development (1242) vs Home Server (845) vs Production (386) https://discourse.nixos.org/t/2022-nix-survey-results/18983).

If you need to generate lxc container in NixOS then perhaps this repo might be useful: https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators this article uses it https://www.thedroneely.com/posts/running-nixos-linux-containers/

You might wanna check out nix-community/nixos-generators, it’s maintained by the same dude as Disko

You can look at nixos-generators for support code that well let you take existing configs and build a variety of bootable images from them.

You should take a look at NixOS Generators, it's a flake with configs to build common formats like ISO, LXC, Docker, etc. I use that to generate an ISO with my config, specifically the packages.iso section.

I am trying to make use of https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators to generate qcow2 images from a NixOs configuration. Since it will be used with Scaleway, they require an efi bootable image.

I haven't migrated machines from one vm provider to vmware, but I have provided a number of pregenerated nixos images (along the line of https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators) to clients to install onto vmware (and other - hyperv, xen, qemu, physical) hosts.