Hiya! I’m following a gamedev degree in university. It’s been a major challenge doing it from Linux, as everything is Windows stuff (.sln Visual Studio projects, DirectX API, excel graphs…). However I’ve gotten by by making my own tools and dipping into WINE when it gets too difficult. I’m replacing my laptop due to hardware faults (never buying from ASUS again) and my Framework 16 preorder should arrive in a month or two.

I’m considering trying out NixOS. I currently have Arch on the laptop because it makes it easy to get recent versions of libraries and compilers. However, I’ve had lots of issues due to inconsistent setup (SDDM theme randomly disappears, KDE apps have black text on dark background, video encoding does not work) and I figured having a declarative config might allow me to set things up better and more consistently. I do have a few worries though, given this is new to me:

  1. Installing proprietary software. For certain courses I unfortunately have to use software like Unreal Engine, Maya, Houdini, Unity, P4V, and a few others. I read NixOS has difficulty with running random binaries. I also could not find an UE5 package in nixpkgs, which Arch does have.
  2. Building binaries. I know nixos does some weird stuff with libraries and binaries. I need to be able to do normal stuff with binaries, and perhaps package and distribute them. It’d be really nice to be able to try out different compilers for my CMake/C++ projects also. Can NixOS do that easily?
  3. VMs. I will be doing dGPU passthrough for testing assignments before handin. I assume this is no problem but it requires some weird stuff so I want to be sure before diving in!

Am I better off just setting up a brittle Arch install again, or is NixOS worth the plunge?

  • @priapusEnglish
    1•4 months ago
    1. NixOS can run binaries well using nix-ld or nix-alien, those will work for the large majority of software. If you run into any trouble, you could always use distrobox as well. Some of this software will also likely be packaged in nixpkgs or other repos.
    2. You should be able to build binaries the same way you can on other distros
    3. GPU pass through works the same on NixOS as other distros, but parts of it will need to be configured in your systems configuration, which may be a bit complex, especially if you’re new to the Nix language. Here’s a good article on setting it up.