I use slack and zoom no problem from nix, you just have to set the allow unfree packages option. nvidia is just janky on linux, period. what you're experiencing is normal for nvidia, unfortunately. if you're on Wayland, try X, and vice versa. might work better on one or the other. I know zoom works flawlessly on X.
Honestly for proprietary apps I use Flatpaks. I just have the daemon for that enabled in my nix config. It's too bad having to manage 2 packaging systems, but I only need a few things installed from flathub and it makes life easier.
god I'm not brave enough to try flatpak on nixos. trying to make appimages work scared me off of the "universal " formats. I just beat my head into the wall learning how to write nix packages.
nixos is a good investment when you know exactly what you like and just want to reproduce it on every machine you touch. the ability to rollback and stuff are just nice perks - they're not gonna get you over the admittedly steep learning curve of the packaging system.
just so I know what level of guide you need - have you ever installed arch or one of the other distros that have you set things up yourself before? or have you mostly used gui installers?
ok, it looks like the manual has a graphical install guide. I recommend setting up home-manager for stuff you want set up for your user. programs that need configuration like steam, firefox, etc. are enabled as options in your /etc/nixos/configuration.nix and home-manager configuration files. so you generally just need a programs.steam.enabled = true; in the appropriate file. you can see the available options for nixos here and home-managers options are in the appendix of the manual I linked earlier. simple programs that are just binaries go into either the environment.systemPackages list or into home.packages.
you generally only want stuff that should be available globally in the system config and most everything else should be installed locally for your user.
home-manager will even install some firefox addons for you if you want them and it will even let you set up userChrome.css and the like. basically, with nixos, instead of configuring programs/services by mucking with config files all over your system, you just set the appropriate options in the nix config files instead.
if you get confused at any point in the process, ping me and I'm happy to help. I can also link some tutorials on youtube if that's helpful.
you generally only want stuff that should be available globally in the system config and most everything else should be installed locally for your user.
since my computer is only for my usage I generally make everything I use available globally just makes things easier imo
it's a personal preference thing. I try to separate what I need in the system as root for recovery and try to move things I don't to the user profile. also helps with like, installing my stuff onto another computer that isn't mine as I can get all my stuff loaded by just loading the home profile on the user, on a system where nixos isn't running.
NixOS btw
nixos gang!
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I use slack and zoom no problem from nix, you just have to set the allow unfree packages option. nvidia is just janky on linux, period. what you're experiencing is normal for nvidia, unfortunately. if you're on Wayland, try X, and vice versa. might work better on one or the other. I know zoom works flawlessly on X.
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Honestly for proprietary apps I use Flatpaks. I just have the daemon for that enabled in my nix config. It's too bad having to manage 2 packaging systems, but I only need a few things installed from flathub and it makes life easier.
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god I'm not brave enough to try flatpak on nixos. trying to make appimages work scared me off of the "universal " formats. I just beat my head into the wall learning how to write nix packages.
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nixos is a good investment when you know exactly what you like and just want to reproduce it on every machine you touch. the ability to rollback and stuff are just nice perks - they're not gonna get you over the admittedly steep learning curve of the packaging system.
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all of those things work perfectly in nixos. I use most of them myself.
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just so I know what level of guide you need - have you ever installed arch or one of the other distros that have you set things up yourself before? or have you mostly used gui installers?
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ok, it looks like the manual has a graphical install guide. I recommend setting up home-manager for stuff you want set up for your user. programs that need configuration like steam, firefox, etc. are enabled as options in your /etc/nixos/configuration.nix and home-manager configuration files. so you generally just need a
programs.steam.enabled = true;in the appropriate file. you can see the available options for nixos here and home-managers options are in the appendix of the manual I linked earlier. simple programs that are just binaries go into either the environment.systemPackages list or into home.packages.you generally only want stuff that should be available globally in the system config and most everything else should be installed locally for your user.
home-manager will even install some firefox addons for you if you want them and it will even let you set up userChrome.css and the like. basically, with nixos, instead of configuring programs/services by mucking with config files all over your system, you just set the appropriate options in the nix config files instead.
if you get confused at any point in the process, ping me and I'm happy to help. I can also link some tutorials on youtube if that's helpful.
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I somewhat disagree on one point there,
since my computer is only for my usage I generally make everything I use available globally just makes things easier imo
it's a personal preference thing. I try to separate what I need in the system as root for recovery and try to move things I don't to the user profile. also helps with like, installing my stuff onto another computer that isn't mine as I can get all my stuff loaded by just loading the home profile on the user, on a system where nixos isn't running.