That is very surprising, last I heard it had to catch up with having popular applications. Is this due to how package dependencies differ on Nix vs what people think of traditionally as packages?
The reason is more that the config language that you have to learn if you want to use NixOS is the exact same you use to package applications for NixOS.
So any user is also just a tiny, non-intimidating step away from being a contributor and package maintainer.
I know for myself, I never packaged for the AUR - just seemed way to intimidating and a lot of new stuff to figure out - but I maintain a bunch of packages and modules in nixpkgs, and they’re all stuff that was “huh, this is cool but not packaged yet; alright, I’ll package it in my private config; oh that was easy, let’s upstream it”.
Awesome! Have fun. And I know I’m just an internet rando, but feel free to ask here/dm if you get stuck with something. The initial learning cliff definitely exists, but it’s absolutely worth it!
There is another reply to this comment where I said I’m not using it. If you are interested in something specific why not just go type the package name into their repository search thingy?
How is Nix with software support these days?
Nothing else even comes close, except the AUR, but even that not really:
https://repology.org/repositories/graphs
Interesting graphs.
Alas, the metric’s a mite confounded by the different ways distros split up packages. So it skews e.g. the Debians up, and the voidlinuxen down.
… I’m guessing that still wouldn’t be enough to put a dent in AUR and nixpkg 's towering package counts though.
That is very surprising, last I heard it had to catch up with having popular applications. Is this due to how package dependencies differ on Nix vs what people think of traditionally as packages?
Not really. (When was last time?)
The reason is more that the config language that you have to learn if you want to use NixOS is the exact same you use to package applications for NixOS.
So any user is also just a tiny, non-intimidating step away from being a contributor and package maintainer.
I know for myself, I never packaged for the AUR - just seemed way to intimidating and a lot of new stuff to figure out - but I maintain a bunch of packages and modules in nixpkgs, and they’re all stuff that was “huh, this is cool but not packaged yet; alright, I’ll package it in my private config; oh that was easy, let’s upstream it”.
Couldn’t even tell you tbh.
Well that’s pretty cool. I always liked the idea of being mega reproducible. I might try it on my home server instead of Debian.
Awesome! Have fun. And I know I’m just an internet rando, but feel free to ask here/dm if you get stuck with something. The initial learning cliff definitely exists, but it’s absolutely worth it!
There is another reply to this comment where I said I’m not using it. If you are interested in something specific why not just go type the package name into their repository search thingy?
https://search.nixos.org/packages