Package Management

Being built on the Nix package manager, NixOS has many entrypoints to the package registry that make it unique compared to most Linux distributions.

• NixOS package search
• How Nix works
• Nix package manager manual

Command-line via your server

When you are entering your server via SSH, there are a couple of couple of ways to interact with packages.

1. Install package in temporary shell

Sometimes, you just want to test a package on your NixOS machine, but not install it permanently.

Let’s say you want to test neovim, but not sure if you should install it on your server.

nix-shell -p neovim

Now you can play with neovim in a temporary Nix shell. Neovim will be gone after closing the shell.

Great for when you want to explore new tools without having to install and uninstall.

2. Install as if it was homebrew/apt-get (not recommended)

nix-env -iA nixos.neovim

You usually want to avoid this when working with NixOS servers.

NixOS configuration

Declarative NixOS configurations are the way to for installing a package globally on your server.

Your configuration.nix will likely contain something like this:

environment.systemPackages = [
  pkgs.bash
  ];

If you have decided you want to install neovim on your server permanently, you can add it in the list (no comma).

environment.systemPackages = [
    pkgs.bash
    pkgs.neovim
  ];

Use unstable packages

All Shipnix starters has the ability to also use unstable packages by using the unstable-prefix.

environment.systemPackages = [
  pkgs.bash
  unstable.neovim
  ];

Enable unfree packages

You should see this in your :

Simply uncomment and comment out the line above which you will find on flake.nix:

    let
      system = "x86_64-linux";
      overlay-unstable = final: prev: {
-       # unstable = nixpkgs-unstable.legacyPackages.${prev.system};
-       # use this variant if unfree packages are needed:
+        unstable = import nixpkgs-unstable {
+        inherit system;
+       config.allowUnfree = true;
+      };
    in {