NixOS

NixOS is a Linux distribution built around the Nix package manager, which provides atomic upgrades, rollbacks, and a declarative configuration model. It was originally founded by Eelco Dolstra.

Home Manager

Home Manager is a NixOS module made to configure your user's /home, Home Manager can be installed in different ways but a common approach is using the NixOS module, as that rebuilds Home Manager along with NixOS. Home Manager also provides a wide variety of options, which can be utilized to manage files, install and configure applications among other utilization options.

Lix

Lix is a community fork of Nix. It uses the meson build system, though the Lix team also plans to gradually introduce Rust to the source code. There are also plans to improve the Nix language and make it into the Lix language, which is different but still generally syntactically compatible with the Nix language.

Controversy

Anduril Sponsorship

NixCon 2023, a community convention for nix, has received a sponsorship from Anduril, a military defense contractor based in the US. The event venue, TU Darmstadt, became aware of the sponsorship and asked for additional information from the Nix Foundation to determine if the sponsorship was in accordance with their policies. Following this, the Nix Foundation decided to rescind the Anduril sponsorship.

Change of Leadership

Following an open letter of criticism to the Nix Foundation demanding the resignation of Eelco Dolstra, he eventually resigned. After the resignation, the new board in charge decided to unban a fascist.

Trivia

• NixOS uses a purely functional package management approach, ensuring that package installations do not interfere with one another.
• The Nix package manager allows for reproducible builds, making it ideal for development environments.