HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
NixOS
nixpkgs
Nix2013–2026
NixOS / nixpkgs

nixpkgs

Nix Packages collection & NixOS

Systems & Infrastructure
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
360Distinct people
597Mentions
11Explicit recommenders
26.8KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Nix Packages collection & NixOS

GitHub

Where it is used

  • NixOS — NixOS uses Nixpkgs as a core part of the distribution; it is built around Nixpkgs. This powers its reproducible, declarative system configuration. Source

What people are saying

I love NixOS, it's my daily driver on my personal laptop, but it definitely has given me more than its fair share of headaches. If everything you're going to do is in Nixpkgs,…

tombert used a recommendation phrase. 11 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 5:05:26 PM UTC.

Apfel-LLM: Drop direct repository link

Read the discussion on HN. A full-thread summary is not available yet.

A technical vision for the Haskell ecosystem direct repository linkDebated

Commenters debate whether Haskell's primary bottleneck is technical performance, such as compile time and incremental builds, or its lack of a coherent, polished ecosystem for building diverse applications like web and desktop software. While some argue that foundational libraries and better developer experience are the missing pieces, others contend that the language's utility is constrained by fragmented tooling and unclear positioning compared to more universal alternatives.

17 readable replies · Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · Supporting reply 3 · Supporting reply 4

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year597 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-12-15 16:18:08 UTC to 2026-10-21 00:27:48 UTC.

02550751001252013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 1 submissions, 6 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 13 mentions; 1 submissions, 12 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 23 mentions; 1 submissions, 22 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 22 mentions; 0 submissions, 22 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 21 mentions; 0 submissions, 21 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 31 mentions; 1 submissions, 30 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 59 mentions; 1 submissions, 58 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 112 mentions; 3 submissions, 109 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 72 mentions; 3 submissions, 69 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 81 mentions; 5 submissions, 76 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 77 mentions; 3 submissions, 74 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 53 mentions; 5 submissions, 48 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 25 mentions; 2 submissions, 23 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC716
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC13112
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC23122
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC22022
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC21021
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC31130
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC59158
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1123109
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC72369
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC81576
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC77374
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC53548
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC25223

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 12, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Nixpkgs is a collection of over 140,000 software packages that can be installed with the Nix package manager. It also implements NixOS, a purely-functional Linux distribution. Manuals NixOS Manual - how to install, configure, and maintain a purely-functional Linux distribution Nixpkgs Manual - contributing to Nixpkgs and using programming-language-specific Nix expressions Nix Package Manager Manual - how to write Nix expressions (programs), and how to use Nix command line tools Community Discourse Forum Matrix Chat Official wiki Community-maintained list of ways to get in touch (Discord, Telegram, IRC, etc.) Other Project Repositories The sources of all official Nix-related projects are in the NixOS organization on GitHub. Here are some of the main ones: Nix - the purely functional package manager NixOps - the tool to remotely deploy NixOS machines nixos-hardware - NixOS profiles to optimize settings for different hardware Nix RFCs - the formal process for making substantial changes to the community NixOS homepage - the NixOS.org website hydra - our continuous integration system NixOS Branding - NixOS branding Continuous Integration and Distribution Nixpkgs and NixOS are built and tested by our continuous integration system, Hydra. Continuous package builds for unstable/master Continuous package builds for the NixOS 26.05 release Tests for unstable/master Tests for the NixOS 26.05 release Artifacts successfully built with Hydra are published to cache at https://cache.nixos.org/. When successful build and test criteria are met, the Nixpkgs expressions are distributed via Nix channels. Contributing Nixpkgs is among the most active projects on GitHub. While thousands of open issues and pull requests might seem like a lot at first, it helps to consider it in the context of the scope of the project. Nixpkgs describes how to build tens of thousands of pieces of software and implements a Linux distribution. The GitHub Insights page gives a sense of the project activity. Community contributions are always welcome through GitHub Issues and Pull Requests. For more information about contributing to the project, please visit the contributing page. Donations The infrastructure for NixOS and related projects is maintained by a nonprofit organization, the NixOS Foundation. To ensure the continuity and expansion of the NixOS infrastructure, we are looking for donations to our organization. You can donate to the NixOS Foundation through SEPA bank transfers or by using Open Collective: License Nixpkgs is licensed under the MIT License. NoteMIT license does not apply to the packages built by Nixpkgs, merely to the files in this repository (the Nix expressions, build scripts, NixOS modules, etc.). It also might not apply to patches included in Nixpkgs, which may be derivative works of the packages to which they apply. The aforementioned artifacts are all covered by the licenses of the respective packages.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

81 sources
crotchfire·Dec 19, 2023
Bootstrapping GCC is not hard at all: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/developmen... (there are a ton of infrequently-used options in there; if you ignore them what's left is quite simple. replace all the options with `false` and do the dead-code elimination.) Hint: don't use glibc. The real problem comes from glibc and the way it depends on gcc internals, which depend on libc (i.e. circularly). Bootstrapping GCC on Musl is quite easy. glibc is the real dumpster fire.
In Progress toward a GCC-based Rust compiler
l0b0·Dec 16, 2023
Took all of 30 seconds to verify it's in NixOS[1]. Another 30 seconds to see it was patched a week ago, at "Dec 8, 2023, 8:23 AM GMT+13", a day after the article was published (Dec 7, 2023, 10:18 AM GMT+13). :shrug: Also, what do they even mean, if the distro announcement says to simply upgrade to fix it[2]? Do they mean that even after the upgrade you need to manually change a setting? Because the NixOS fix seems to be simply to flip the default setting. If they mean that users which have explicitly set ClassicBondedOnly=false need to change it, that could've been a lot clearer. [1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/3dda6d5ed56af34534dd4c... [2] https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-4311-1
In Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux, macOS and iOS
dqv·Dec 15, 2023
I mean anything new that I'm experiencing for the first time is magic because I don't understand how it works. Perl was magic until I learned what the weird syntax meant. I've learned a little about Java over the years and so it seems less magical, but there still seems to be a lot of magic I can't comprehend. I think the issue is that Nix is "too much new", not too much magic. Because I have familiarity with Nix, I can go to e.g. the PostgreSQL build file [0] and mostly make sense of what's going on, just like any other language I'm familiar with. Now if you give me something like a debian package, I have no idea WTF is going on. If anything goes wrong with a package installation, there isn't much I can do, except try to build outside the package manager. With Nix, I have a few options, from simply overriding the upstream repository to f
Read the rest
orking the broken module to fix whatever problems I'm having. It's also really nice to be able to be confident that what is in the Nix file is what's in my environment. As the syntax and libraries became more familiar, so did my confidence using Nix. That's pretty much how it works with most things, I think. [0]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/203ecda835bcf69633df71...
In NixOS has one fatal flaw
AndyKelley·Dec 13, 2023
Why not let the upstream application developer decide, rather than choosing for them? This is one of the downsides of using C/C++ rather than a modern programming language like Rust or Zig. In the former case, the system maintainers reach across the table and change the settings, despite what the actual application developer has chosen. In the latter, the upstream developers' choices are respected more, mainly because the tooling is less standardized. Shoutouts to this NixOS bug which is still ongoing after causing much pain for many years: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/18995
In Ubuntu 24.04 LTS will enable frame pointers by default
n8henrie·Nov 24, 2023
I apologize for the moderately OT help request, but as Tweag has some great nix / rust content, and this is about debugging, I thought some HNers with relevant interests might swing by -- I am going nuts trying to get debugging working for nix-compiled rust on an M1 Mac (via llvm). My posts to the nix forum, rust forum, and my nixpkgs repo have gone without response, and I'm a humble hobbyist that is running out of ideas. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, please take a look at https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/262131 -- TIA, and I apologize again if this detracts from the OP!
In Separating debug symbols from executables
Aerbil313·Nov 14, 2023
Take a look at nix-shell scripts. Much simpler, lightweight and faster alternative to Docker and friends for being able to build a project forever. Start of a build script from a C project of mine: #!/usr/bin/env nix-shell #! nix-shell -i fish --pure #! nix-shell -I https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/4ecab3273592f27479a583fb6d975d4aba3486fe.… #! nix-shell --packages fish gcc gnumake gmp git cacert ...build script goes here... -i fish: I am using fish shell. --pure: Environment is as pure as it can reasonably get. --packages: Packages from nixpkgs to be made available in the environment. -I <github_commit_hash>: pinned to a specific git commit of nixpkgs. This script will give you the exact same environment with the exact same packages with exact same dependencies forever. You can drop into a shell with the exact same
Read the rest
configuration by using the cli command nix-shell with the same options. Admittedly this is not as declarative as using flakes, since it's a script, but hey, I'm lazy, still didn't sit down to learn them once and for all. Reference: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/nix-shell
In Rust without crates.io

Showing the 15 most recent of 81 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.