Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by troupo 388 days ago
So, an "easy" "better" option is:

- worse ux (nix commands are much more cumbersome and often make no sense compared to `brew install`)

- you have to use some third-party wrappers to make it work on Mac

- features incomplete and outdated packages (and is missing others apparently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44034446)

... but it "does the job better than anything else could".

---

This is the issue I have with the whole nix discourse: it's hailed as this great magical tool. But when pressed for details it's always this: weird commands, configs, working or non-working wrappers etc.
1 comments
lambdaba 388 days ago
This is just from my experience, I'm not part of any kind of Nix cult or anything, not that I'm aware of.

I don't know what you're talking about re: third party wrappers, this is just an option for a slightly easier and perhaps more robust install. And homebrew isn't free of issues at all.

link
troupo 388 days ago
So a "better than anything" still needs "a better more robust install" and you still use homebrew for "packages that are packaged better like ... the extremely popular and often installed ffmpeg"

;)

> And homebrew isn't free of issues at all.

No one advertises brew as "the best", "better than everything else" etc.

BTW, looked at Determinate Nix. It's a custom distribution and a custom daemon, and its own fork of documentation

link
lambdaba 388 days ago
I don't use Determinate Nix but I've heard it recommended. As I've said I've had 1 or 2 issues with my Nix install on Mac over several years.

Re: ffmpeg, it's just something do to with default codecs or something I don't remember, I'm not even sure I really needed it but I saw it on my packages list and since I use nix-darwin it doesn't matter that much where the package comes from. I have hundreds of packages from nixpkgs, many shared with Linux, and quite a few Mac specific ones.

Again, I'm not part of a Nix cult, I just genuinely have had an overall great experience with Nix and I find the criticism overblown. I guess since a subset of users are very enthusiastic and vocal about it it attracts this.

link