Kitaab

Amazed at the NixOS Community

writing nix micro blog

published 2020-10-20 19:26

updated 2023-06-06 21:33

Even by FOSS zealot standards, I run an esoteric combination of hardware and software. My interests go beyond just "getting things done"; I have a strange fascination with tools themselves. I specifically choose tools I can customize to fit my hand like glove, and the FOSS world has plenty of choices for those so inclined. This obsession with obscurity means I end up playing with software that looks like an ASCII video game, but is actually a music tracker, emulates modular synthesizers or is a DSL in an already esoteric programming language for livecoding Even when it comes to hardware, I use a phone you probably haven't heard of (it has a physical keyboard! in 2020!), and my smartwatch is literally no longer available for purchase, that I revived through a battery transplant.

And yet, the NixOS community has packages for all of these. There's a derivation of the Pebble SDK, TidalCycles and VCV-Rack. It's awesome. Even though they don't natively package all the vim plugins I'm using, I've gotten the hang of updating nixpkgs to include these plugins, and I've even made a couple PRs so they are available to the wider community! I didn't think the intersection between FOSS zealots who use NixOS, like livecoding or are die-hard Pebble fans would be greater than 1, but here I am😊


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