NixOS 23.11 released!

Announcements NixOS Releases
14

Yeah.
I think honestly, that your instructions are a great start. :smiley:

Thanks for pointing out that the LLM was wrong, I have a very basic configuration, I think .
I added new packages only via configuration.nix, and added no further channels, home-manager, or anything of that sorts.

Still, after using NixOS for 2 months, this is the first time that I am truly stuck, and I think the documentation could definitely be improved here.

I was quite happy with it besides this, honestly. :slight_smile:

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15

Congrats on the release!

Is there page somewhere that lays out the EOL policies for the releases? I’m curious if there ever long(er)-term security supported versions?

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16

I think its always 7 months from the point of release.

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17

What @ShalokShalom said is correct, but let me add that there is currently no LTS release, nor is one planned.

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18

I’ve tried adding system.autoUpgrade.channel = "https://channels.nixos.org/nixos-23.11"; to my config file, and it doesn’t do anything, even after sudo nixos-rebuild switch and reboot.

Is it better to do the sudo nix-channel --add https://channels.nixos.org/nixos-23.11 nixos and then sudo nixos-rebuild switch method?

To be more specific, this is what’s in my config file for auto system upgrades:

# system upgrades
system.autoUpgrade.enable = true;
system.autoUpgrade.allowReboot = false;
boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_6_5; # Use pkgs.linuxPackages_6_5 if nvidia drivers fail, use pkgs.linuxPackages_latest if nvidia drivers work on "latest"!

system.autoUpgrade.channel = "https://channels.nixos.org/nixos-23.11";
19

Yes. system.autoUpgrade runs said updates with a systemd timer which runs once a day by default.

You’ve basically told NixOS to update your system at midnight, or whenever you next boot your computer after midnight passes. That option is intended to do the small, tedious updates on a single NixOS version where you don’t expect much breakage, not distro upgrades.

It will likely trigger a rebuild, fail, and then dump the logs into your journal, where you won’t think to read them.

By default, it will also use nixos-rebuild switch, which is not recommended on major upgrades and may cause kernel panics (?).

While enabling that module is fine, and probably even good practice, I think I would not recommend setting system.autoUpgrade.channel, personally, unless you have a specialized use case (such as a custom nixpkgs fork with your own branching strategy). It makes it awkward to do the manual steps involved in stable upgrades.

20

Good tip for people who are upgrading for the first time:

If you run nixos-rebuild build-vm, (after updating your channel or flake input), you will get a script that boots your configuration in a VM, so you can make sure it works. The main catch here is that password data doesn’t get embedded, so you need something like services.getty.autologinUser = <username> if you want to do more than a boot check.

5 Likes
21

I’ve found package aliza dissapearing in this release. Why would a package disappear, whats the point?

22

I’ve found package aliza dissapearing in this release. Why would a package disappear, whats the point?

packages disappear because there is no one to maintain them. Your configuration can depend on multiple versions of nixpkgs, so you can still get the package that way.

2 Likes
23

i think it should stay in nixpkgs and depend on old revision. Because now I can’t search for it on the website. It might be my favourite package and I won’t install nixpkgs because of that.

EDIT: Ok, i dont know. Not sure about that.

24

Couple of things here:

  1. aliza depends on qt4 which we no longer support
  2. aliza was removed from nixpkgs before the release of 23.11
  3. by disappear, if you mean “it just isn’t on my system after the upgrade and it didn’t tell me anything”, that cannot happen. You would have gotten an error telling you that “aliza has been removed, because it depended on qt4 and was unmaintained in nixpkgs”.

You can however, still install software from older nixos releases

i think it should stay in nixpkgs and depend on old revision

That’s not how nix works.

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25

It was error: undefined variable 'aliza' :stuck_out_tongue:
haskellPackages.cabal-plan had a nice descriptive one.

Anyway haha, thanks for the context!

1 Like
26

thanks to all who contributed. The upgrade went smooth, was flawless

Question: in which NixOS release will flakes be enabled by default - is there a plan/duedate/roadmap?
Because even ‘zero to nix’ strongly recommends using it

27

I looked for this at one point as well, and didn’t find anything.

But I did ask a somewhat-related question here on Discourse and sort of got it cleared up:

1 Like
28

Hey, @kvtb. From what I’ve researched in the past, I came across this RFC which was very informative about the current status of Flakes and what the roadmap would be.

TL;DR: CLI will be stabilised first, then flakes.

Moreover, you could track meeting notes that are released right here on discourse.nixos.org. They mention flake-related things from time to time which may give good info on what’s the latest status on them.

Also, this thread isn’t the right place to discuss this; so, if you have anything more to ask, feel free to create a new topic.

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29

This marks my first major version upgrade after switching to NixOS 5 months ago (coming from 15+ years of MacOS). The process has been very easy and smooth so thanks to everyone for their dedication and effort in making this possible.

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30

I just upgraded my entire home network. The upgrade was painless.
Thanks for everyone’s hard work to make such an exceptional operating system experience!

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31

Super. Thanks. That did it for me.
My config is here (a newbie’s setup… )

33

This is soo underrated but a huge boon

34

Unfortunately, the new camera app doesn’t work (Snapshot cannot play camera stream · Issue #261217 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub) and the old camera app was removed (by default).

1 Like