I'm stumbling through my Ubuntu setup and having to add software, but when I want to try something new I run the risk of irrevocably modifying my system and leaving behind artifacts from whatever thing I tried out. So I figured this was a good reason to try out Nix on Ubuntu.

I ran the command mentioned on the \[web site\]:

sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon

Which failed because T383838curl wasn't installed by default.

So...

sudo apt-get install curl

Wait a while.

sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon

Answer a bunch of prompting (mostly hitting enter) and wait a while longer.

I launched gajim as my first test.

nix-shell -p gajim --run gajim

It downloaded for a really long time. Then popped up.

That didn't install it though. I think I can just make a T383838configuration.nix file and put it somewhere but I have to read on that.

In the mean-time, this will install software:

nix-env --install gajim

The T383838--daemon option installs the Multi User NixOS. Which the docs say is harder to uninstall but I don't know what that means. I'll probably just wipe the SD card if I need to change the OS in any meaningful way, since it's a Raspberry Pi.

Tags: ubuntu, nixos

created: 2024-08-04

(re)generated: 2026-07-17