NixOS Wiki – the unofficial user wiki | Hacker News Reader

NixOS Wiki – the unofficial user wiki

nixos.wiki

48 pointsc0balt14 comments

One big issue with the NixOS wiki is that the maintainer of the web server is unresponsive for a long time [0]. Therefore, the wiki software is really out of date and using the page editor is a real pain in the butt [1].

I tried to write more for the wiki while learning things about NixOS. But it's so annoying to make changes that I eventually gave up.

I really like NixOS and Nix in general, it just lacks a central and organized, community maintained documentation like the Arch wiki. So, I hope either the maintainer will eventually become available again (unlikely IMO) and update the server, or we could mirror the current wiki on a new server.

[0] - https://github.com/nix-community/wiki/issues/46

[1] - https://github.com/nix-community/wiki/issues/40

I share your concerns. I've been chatting with a few people about this and made various false starts... It might not be my project, but I felt I could write down the risks I saw in how the wiki is ran: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/User:Winny/WikiRisks (including vulnerable server software)

And why don't you setup a new server yourself but instead just complain and wait?

Also your cves if they are real why not showing how to exploit them?

Because forking is also expensive and people would need to discover the new domain. Otherwise I would already have done it. We already have the issue of having too many different sources of documentation. And hacking the wiki is the last thing I want to do... I don't want get visits from the police from $someone.

Agreed. We want the wiki to listen to the community's needs and ensure continuity of it. This means a team is likely needed.

The next big problem with NixOS documentation is that there are a lot of smaller tutorials scattered around the web. Every page with a different style, focus, and depth.

What we need is one central wiki, where any problem search can begin. This is what makes the Arch wiki so great.

It would be useful if the wiki articles showed a 'last modified at' date. Articles like this [0] dominate search results, but it's not clear how outdated the info is.

In case anyone is looking for an up-to-date NixOS guide/cookbook, I've found lots of value in this [1] resource.

[0] - https://nixos.wiki/wiki/PulseAudio

[1] - https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/

[1] link doesn't work for me, any mirrors?

Here is the source on github in case you're still unable to access the page: https://github.com/ryan4yin/nixos-and-flakes-book

Best thing about Arch is its documentation. Worst thing about Nix is its documentation.

It's not that bad if you just want to use/configure existing software - I often find exactly what I'm looking for by googling "[software i want to use] nixos". It gets harder when you start to write your own derivations.

That is true of any distro. Packaging software for NixOS is still easier than arch or Debian.

I maintain multiple packages on the AUR and PKGBUILDs are pretty easy to understand imo. I only had a look at one or two Nix package builds and they seemed much more complex to me.

The nixos module and their tests make it very discoverable how to run many services. Where in arch I actually have to read where programs put there configuration, in NixOS I can already start configuring. Also github search is very value just put the nixos option + lang:nix and you find tons of examples.

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