Summary of Bridging the stepping stones: using pieces of NixOS without full commitment

00:00:00 - 00:25:00

Michael Raskin discusses how to use pieces of NixOS without full commitment, and how it's easier than using full-fledged NixOS. He claims that your system is next package, if you boot up to stage 2 of NixOS, you are very likely to boot successfully and into a consistent state, and you have a declarative configuration which is just a single expression which gets instantiated from zero to complete.

• 00:00:00 NixOS is a distribution of Linux that uses pieces of other distributions without full commitment. Michael Raskin will talk about how to use these pieces of NixOS without full commitment, and how it's easier than using full-fledged NixOS. There are three main points he will make: (1) your system is next package, (2) if you boot up to stage 2 of NixOS, you are very likely to boot successfully and into a consistent state, and (3) you have a declarative configuration which is just a single expression which gets instantiated from zero to complete.
• 00:05:00 In this video, the speaker discusses the use of pieces of NixOS without full commitment. He claims that the main value of NixOS is its large database of configuration generators for many many services. However, there are some catches. First, many services are configured not adjust under their namespace, and also some services are too complicated for a working Runner script to be generated automatically. If a user wants to replace a service, they would have to extract the code and replace it with something more modular. The model system is the wrong question; the question is can we make it not matter. Services could be like packages, with parameters and pass-throughs that request and inspect other service instances. The user's choice would be to ensure that everything gets passed and that every service gets correctly configured. The module system would be the default, but it would be easier to extract it and replace it.
• 00:10:00 The author provides a brief overview of their approach to using pieces of NixOS without committing to using it fully. They mention that their system is managed by a custom return cost common list Diamond, and that they use Snippets to provide system generation scripts for all the bootloaders they support. They also mention that they use full versions of various tools and libraries included in NixOS, and that they like to have their services started explicitly. Finally, the author provides a brief overview of their Firefox profile builder.
• 00:15:00 The speaker discusses how their use of NixOS modules compares and practices with the usability of the module system and their extensibility mechanism. They mention that their use of NixOS modules has better transparency and easier debuggability for their specific use case, but that it is another story for many people. The speaker also mentions that they have never tried to use model system to have multiple people take multiple builds of vastly different configurations, and that they cannot exclude this for many people.
• 00:20:00 In this video, the speaker discusses how they use pieces of NixOS without committing fully to the system. They suggest using packages and modules as a way to have more control over the system and avoid global namespaces.
• 00:25:00 In this video, Michael talks about his jail setup, which is based on the NixOS operating system. He notes that there are some small things which are specific to his setup, but most of his setup is online and easily accessible. He also notes that he uses the nsgl tool to generate flags for the nsjl library.