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New to Nix (piefed.social)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by Pamboo@piefed.social to c/nix@programming.dev

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I have never installed a nix package on Steam Deck under SteamOS before. I followed his instructions from this website , everything is ok without problem, then I installed an app with this command nix-env -iA nixpkgs.mullvad-vpn. When I finish installing an app, I open Mullvad GUI, I see a message

Unable to contact the Mullvad system 
service, your connection might be unsecure. 
Please troubleshoot or send a problem 
report by clicking the "Learn more" button.

I don't know how to fix this issue

My Nix version is 2.32.4 and my SteamOS version is 3.7.13

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[–] Corbin@programming.dev 2 points 3 days ago

Hi! Welcome to the Nix community. You've made an unfortunate choice for your first package, because VPNs usually need to be integrated with system networking to function properly, and Nix without a daemon or NixOS is not able to do that. A distro has multiple pieces, including package management (putting executables and libraries onto your disk) and system configuration (interacting with the low-level hardware). Nix is a package manager; NixOS is Nix and also system configuration and some other stuff like booting.

For the specific case of Mullavad, I found this community documentation:

Warning: Mullvad VPN currently only works if systemd-resolved is enabled.

All you need to know here is that systemd is part of the system configuration; systemd-resolved is part of how some Linux systems look up names. Nix's version of Mullavad VPN is only compatible with a specific NixOS configuration.

Honestly, it's great to hear that the GUI and nix-env are working for you; those are things that often break on unusual targets. It sounds like the only thing that doesn't work is something which cannot work as installed.

[–] Paulemeister@feddit.org 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I would generally not recommend installing packages like that (even though it's often the first thing you see on websites), prefer declaring it in your configuration.nix or use nix-shell -p for a quick test of a package. It might be helpful to run the program through the terminal to get more useful debugging output

[–] Pamboo@piefed.social 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Do you mean that this command nix-env -iA nixpkgs is not recommended ? For what reason ? If it's not recommended, how do I uninstall an app that I installed packaged with nix-env ? Then I add a configuration.nix with this command kate /etc/nixos/configuration.nix , then I copy and paste

  environment.systemPackages = [
    pkgs.mullvad-vpn
  ];

is it correct ? Because I don't have a "nixos" folder in my /etc/. After creating a .nix configuration for a Mullvad package, how do I install this app ? I have already executed this command nix-shell -p mullvad-vpn before but it gives a result

Error: Management RPC server or client error  

Caused by:  
         0:   transport error  
         1:   No such file or directory (os error 2)  
         2:   No such file or directory (os error 2)

[–] Zangoose@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

The point of using Nix as opposed to something like flatpak (or apt) is that all of your packages are managed through a text file (aka "declaratively"). The benefit of this approach is that, if you ever install a package that breaks something, you can easily undo any installation or system setting by reverting it in that single location. You also don't get the problem where your computer slowly fills up with stuff you no longer need, because necessary programs would only be pulled in if they're needed by ones you defined. This is also very nice for developers because it makes a system environment easy to replicate.

By installing packages with that command, you're removing the main benefits of Nix, which is why it isn't recommended. The recommended way to do it is to edit your nix configuration file with the package you want, and then run the nix rebuild command which will actually download the package. (There's also a clean command which will fully remove previously installed programs no longer being used)

NixOS is a Linux distribution built entirely around this concept, where everything about the OS is managed by Nix. Since you're just installing Nix on a steam deck, the config file won't be under /etc/nixos, but a different location. I'm honestly not too sure where though because I've only ever used Nix on NixOS.