Presented is the release of the NixOS 21.05 distribution, based on the Nix package manager and providing a number of proprietary developments that simplify system setup and maintenance. 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 the installation of individual packages by individual users (the package is placed in the home directory), and allows simultaneous installation of several versions of the same program , reproducible assemblies are ensured. The size of the full installation image with KDE is 1.4 GB, GNOME is 1.8 GB, and the shortened console version is 660 MB.
Main innovations:
- 12985 packages were added, 14109 packages were removed, 16768 packages were updated. Updated versions of distribution components, including gcc 10.3.0, glibc 2.32, mesa 21.0.1. The base Linux kernel has been updated from version 5.4 to 5.10, with kernel 5.12 offered as an option.
- Desktops have been updated to KDE 5.21.3 (+ KDE Applications 20.12.3), GNOME 3.40 and Cinnamon 4.8.1.
- Added new services with GNURadio 3.8, Keycloak authentication server and Discourse discussion platform.
When using Nix, packages are installed in a separate directory tree /nix/store or a subdirectory in the user's directory. For example, the package is installed as /nix/store/f2b5...8a163-firefox-89.0.0/, where "f2b5..." is the unique package identifier used for dependency monitoring. Packages are designed as containers containing the components necessary for applications to operate. A similar approach is used in the GNU Guix package manager, which is based on Nix developments.
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 provided in a special Nixpkgs repository.
Source: opennet.ru