Release of the NixOS 19.09 distribution using the Nix package manager

Submitted by distribution release Nix OS 19.09based on a package manager nix and providing a number of its own developments that simplify the configuration and maintenance of the system. For example, NixOS uses a single system configuration file (configuration.nix), provides the ability to quickly roll back updates, supports switching between different system states, supports installation of individual packages by individual users (the package is placed in the home directory), simultaneous installation of several versions of one program is possible. , the possibility of reproducible assemblies is provided. Full size installation image with KDE - 1.3 GB, an abbreviated console version - 560 MB.

All innovations:

• The installer can be run under an unprivileged user
  nixos instead of root (sudo -i without a password is used to get root rights);

• Xfce desktop updated to branch 4.14;
• The PHP package has been updated to the 7.3 branch. PHP 7.1 branch has been discontinued;
• The GNOME 3 desktop management module provides the ability to enable/disable services, applications, and add-on packages such as games. The installed GNOME 3 environment is as close as possible to the original distribution. Stopped installation of accerciser, dconf-editor, evolution,
  gnome-documents
  gnome-nettool
  gnome-power-manager,
  gnome-todo
  gnome-tweaks,
  gnome-usage
  gucharmap,
  nautilus-sendto and vinagre. Included in the basic delivery
  cheese, geary, gnome-color-manager and orca. The services.avahi.enable service is activated;

• Updated versions of distribution components, including
  systemd 242;

• Added dwm-status service and hardware.printers module;
• Support for Python 2 has been dropped.

When using Nix, packages are installed in a separate /nix/store directory tree or a subdirectory in the user's directory. For example, a package is installed as /nix/store/f3a4…8a143-firefox-69.0.2/ where “f3a4…” is a unique package identifier used to control dependencies. Packages are designed as containers containing the components necessary for the application to work.

It is possible to determine dependencies between packages by scanning the hash identifiers in the directory of installed packages to find the presence of already installed dependencies. It is possible both to download ready-made binary packages from the repository (when installing updates to binary packages, only delta changes are downloaded), or build from source with all dependencies. The collection of packages is presented in a special repository Nixpkgs.

Source: opennet.ru