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Comment by k__ | Hacker News Reader

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k__·

Nix the package manager.

Nix the language.

NixOS the Linux built with Nix as it's default package manager that uses the Nix language.

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Nix the language can compile OCI (Open Container Initiative) format images that can be deployed/ran/executed via Docker or k8s?

Or is that Nix the package manager? Does Nix the package manager compile Nix the language images?

[nixpkgs the package collection] (which is used by [Nix the package manager], and also contains the [Nix the programming language] expressions that define [NixOS the operating system]) has expressions for easily building OCI images: https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#sec-pkgs-dockerTool...

Do you have to be on NixOS to use the OCI images outputtable by nixpks/nix package manager or can you build OCI images using Nix from Mac/Windows/other non NixOS Linux?

> Do you have to be on NixOS to use the OCI images outputtable by nixpks/nix package manager

> can you build OCI images using Nix from Mac/Windows/other non NixOS Linux?

Non NixOS Unix, not Windows yet, unless you use WSL or a VM

They're just normal OCI images, so they can be run by any OCI-compatible container runtime. You can build images from any system running Nix, though you might encounter trouble on non-Linux systems because you may need to cross-compile the packages you use. The build process is exactly the same on any Linux distro (including NixOS and anything else) though.

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