Beginners Guide to Nix EP1: Flakes

Nix, NixOS, nixlang... what does it all mean?
An quick introductory video with all the stuff you actually need to know in order to use nix.

[Endomorphism]

at 25:54, like number 19 should be `default = ?

[Alexander_Sannikov]

I can't agree more to the bizarre fact how every tool of the nix ecosystem provides an ingenious alien tech solution that crystallizes a lifetime of somebody's knowledge and experience, but it consistently fails to explain what problem it's actually addressing. It describes what properties their solution has, but it somehow fails to explain which problem it solves or it makes it sound like it solves a problem that you don't have.

[Alexander_Sannikov]

I think it's a big mistake that many nixos tutorials make (especially the official ones): they start with setting up a dev environment. The thing is, every dev first sets up their own environment first. Your first question is never : "how do I compile my project?", it's something like "how do I install a text editor?" or "how do I view currently installed packages?", etc etc. Only after getting comfortable with basic system management a person will likely transition to doing development on it.

[qmster]

Finally a good intro with flakes and everything, not legacy and the same old channels + env stuff.

[Bvngee]

Dude, this is so good! You asked and then answered all of my questions as soon as I had them. This is the best introduction to what Nix and NixOS really are I've ever seen; better than the website, better than anything else on youtube whatsoever. The messy and feeling that I left Windows for is coming back to me on Arch, and Nix seems to be a potential solution to that. This _really_ helps to understand how I would and could use it.

[AaronConway]

I really appreciate your awareness for new and or unaware users. The last video I watched was blindly reading from a book. This is very nice.

[BradleyADavis]

Great video! Just starting my Nix journey. Need more content just like this!

[dakata]

Great video, but the audio is too low.

[vp]

I really enjoyed your video, especially the tiny tiny fonts. I liked the touch of red color for fonts showing your code example. That was almost impossible to see, perfect to go with your barely audible mumbling voice. I also liked how you left all that open black screen real estate uncluttered. I could see my own reflection clearly. That was fun!

[shawlishawli]

thanks for posting this! really like how you explain things.

[Ryan-ffdb]

Subscriber #14 here. Keep up the good work and you will get more. Looking forward to the rest of this series. There is woefully little content and tutorials on Nix and NixOS. Thanks.

[sujezz]

I'm 16 minutes in and I don't even know what I'm watching.

[marcuswest]

Excellent video Ian. I think the best Nixos video I've seen actually. (You could make the text a tad bigger btw)

[blablasijus]

I was not able to edit with or without sudo /etc/nix/nix.conf file because it is marked as read only. Had to put = [ "nix-command" "flakes" ]; into /etc/nixos/configuration.nix file and then rebuild-switch and after that it worked as in this video.

[theinrovert-lc]

Please can you do a step by step, configuration of NixOS, like with hyper land and stuffs .. would really appreciate it

[azizul_islam]

thanks for this serise. it would be great to have a dedicated video about a flake with nixos and home-manager configuration ...

[jinilover]

Thanks a lot for the tutorial. Understood many concepts.
At 19:42, I think `import nixpkgs` returns a function. This function works for an argument of a set containing `system` attribute. How to find a valid system value? Is it done by `nix flake show`? How to find the usage of this function, what other attributes allowed and their corresponding valid attribute values? Sorry for so many questions.

[saileshprabhu-zluz]

Can you please tell me which wm, de is this. And can you make a video on how you customised it pls.

[rafaeloledo]

i'm on 13:00, not finished viewing, but i'd like to thanks the unedited analytic video

[Alexander_Sannikov]

"if a command has a dash in it, it's not the one you want to be using" jesus christ, this is the type of things you literally can't find on your own: since there's normally 69 ways to do anything in nix (and 68 of them are either legacy or intended for something else), you never know which way to do the thing is the right one. Just stupid rules of thumb about what you're expected to use is the thing a new user really struggles with finding.