Nix Community: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 13:41, 7 October 2024

This article provides an overview of the Nix Community, to give an idea of who we — the users and maintainers of the Nix Ecosystem — are. To find the various ways to reach us, see get in touch.

People

Nix Ecosystem users and contributors are a mixed bunch, ranging from hobbyist to professional, from industry to academia. Typical user groups include:

desktop users using Nix and NixOS to make life on their personal machines easier;
power users duplicating their environment across their personal and work machines;
gamers using NixOS to declaratively configure unbreakable and sharable gaming setups;
developers using Nix to reproducibly build their software, and to manage various development environments;
system administrators declaratively configuring servers and clusters with NixOS and NixOps;
researchers interested in making the computation in their research reproducible.

Institutions

NixOS Foundation

The NixOS Foundation is responsible for providing operational and organizational support to the Nix Ecosystem and community. It also funds the official Hydra instance which builds the Nixpkgs collection.

The ecosystem is developed and maintained by many individuals and self-organised community teams.

Consultants

There are a several qualified consultants that can provide support for Nix-based systems:

Industry

Many companies utilize Nix-based systems for various purposes. Prominent examples include:

Mozilla (see also nixpkgs-mozilla)
Tumblr
Shopify also youtube playlist by @burke
LumiGuide
RhodeCode
Awake Security
Atlassian
Replit
Magnetic Insight, a medical imaging company.

Academia

Nix has its roots in academia; Nix was the result of Eelco Dolstra's PhD thesis in the University of Utrecht, and Hydra was developed at the Technical University of Delft. Some academic research continues to develop the Nix Ecosystem further - notably some work is planned on incremental builds by Guillaume Maudoux as part of his PhD.

Nix is also being extensively used to manage powerful computing clusters, since its resolution of dependency problems allows letting users install packages ad-hoc with greatly reduced risk of breaking things. Academic clusters utilizing Nix-based software include some of the biggest clusters in the world:

Podcasts

- Full Time Nix

Contribute

Main article: Contributing

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{Expansion|This article is a stub.}}
+This article provides an overview of the Nix Community, to give an idea of who we &mdash; the users and maintainers of the Nix Ecosystem &mdash; are. To find the various ways to reach us, see [[Get In Touch|get in touch]].
-This article provides an overview of the Nix Community, to give an idea of who we - the users and maintainers of the Nix Ecosystem - are. To find the various ways to reach us, see the [[Get Involved]] article.
 == People ==
-=== Users ===
+Nix Ecosystem users and contributors are a mixed bunch, ranging from hobbyist to professional, from industry to academia. Typical user groups include:
+* '''desktop users''' using Nix and NixOS to make life on their personal machines easier;
-[ Describe the Nix user community (would be handy to have demographics) ]
+* '''power users''' duplicating their environment across their personal and work machines;
+* '''gamers''' using NixOS to declaratively configure unbreakable and sharable gaming setups;
-=== Developers ===
+* '''developers''' using Nix to reproducibly build their software, and to manage various development environments;
+* '''system administrators''' declaratively configuring servers and clusters with NixOS and NixOps;
-[ Describe the Nix developer community (would be handy to have demographics) ]
+* '''researchers''' interested in making the computation in their research reproducible.
 == Institutions ==
@@ Line 17: / Line 15: @@
 === NixOS Foundation ===
-[ Describe the functions and structure of the NixOS foundation ]
+The [https://nixos.org/community/teams/foundation-board NixOS Foundation] is responsible for providing operational and organizational support to the [[Nix Ecosystem]] and community. It also funds the [https://hydra.nixos.org/ official Hydra instance] which builds the Nixpkgs collection.
+The ecosystem is developed and maintained by many individuals and self-organised [https://nixos.org/community/#governance-teams community teams].
 === Consultants ===
-[ Describe Nix specialized consultants ]
+There are a several qualified consultants that can provide support for Nix-based systems:
+* [https://determinate.systems/ Determinate Systems]
+* [https://nixcademy.com/ Nixcademy]
+* [https://numtide.com/ Numtide]
+* [https://obsidian.systems/ Obsidian Systems]
+* [https://serokell.io/ Serokell]
+* [https://www.tweag.io/ Tweag I/O]
 === Industry ===
-[ Insert a table of industry players using/developing Nix stuff ]
+Many companies utilize Nix-based systems for various purposes. Prominent examples include:
+* [https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/9473-london-nixos-january-meetup Mozilla] (see also [https://github.com/mozilla/nixpkgs-mozilla nixpkgs-mozilla])
+* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VH945-AaRY Tumblr]
+* [https://shopify.engineering/shipit-presents-how-shopify-uses-nix Shopify] also [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRGI9KQ3_HP_OFRG6R-p4iFgMSK1t5BHs youtube playlist] by @burke
+* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4DgATIjx9E LumiGuide]
+* [https://rhodecode.com/ RhodeCode]
+* [https://awakesecurity.com/ Awake Security]
+* [https://www.atlassian.com/ Atlassian]
+* [https://www.replit.com/ Replit]
+* [https://www.magneticinsight.com Magnetic Insight], a medical imaging company.
 === Academia ===
-[ Insert a table of academic players using/developing Nix stuff ]
+Nix has its roots in academia; Nix was the result of [https://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf Eelco Dolstra's PhD thesis] in the University of Utrecht, and Hydra was developed at the Technical University of Delft. Some academic research continues to develop the Nix Ecosystem further - notably some work is planned on [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AED-dgCa9GU incremental builds] by Guillaume Maudoux as part of his PhD.
+Nix is also being extensively used to manage powerful computing clusters, since its resolution of dependency problems allows letting users install packages ad-hoc with greatly reduced risk of breaking things. Academic clusters utilizing Nix-based software include some of the biggest clusters in the world:
+* [https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/ Human Brain Project]
+* [https://bluebrain.epfl.ch/ Blue Brain Project]
+=== Podcasts ===
+- [https://fulltimenix.com/ Full Time Nix]
 == Contribute ==
-Development of [[Nix Package Manager|Nix]] and [[NixOS]] happens primarily on [[Nixpkgs]]. You can contribute by helping reporting, diagnosing  and closing issues, by creating, testing and reviewing pull-requests, and by becoming a maintainer of packages and modules hosted on the repository. For more information, see [[Nixpkgs#Contributing|the contributing section of the Nixpkgs article]].
+{{main|Contributing}}
-[[Category:Discussion]]
+[[Category:Pedias]]
 [[Category:Community]]
-[[Category:Incomplete]]