Terms and Definitions in Nix Project: Difference between revisions

|| Profiles simplify managing and switching between ''user environments'' (and thus, control which applications and system configurations are used). Most generally, a ''profile'' is a link to a ''generation'', and there's a '''profiles''' (note the '''s''') folder which collects types of profiles together so that they form lists of generations. In standalone Nix (e.g. on a different Linux distro), its primary use is user profiles. In NixOS, there is also the ''system'' profile, which manages system-wide configuration (e.g. ''/etc'', the kernel, ''initrd'', ''systemd''). Tools like [[Home Manager]] also have their own profile (which would also be per-user). The user's ''active profile'' is defined in ''~/.nix-profile'', and is what all '''nix-env''' commands would operate on by default.<syntaxHighlight lang=shell>