For a personal desktop environment, I just install them normally when there's no up to date nixified option.

For some things I've vibe-coded a nix module on github that uses a scheduled github action to check for underlying app updates and then it generates a new hash and tags a release.

I've done that for claude code and cursor, which is also an opportunity to let me manage their config files from my nix config.

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snailmailman 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I run NixOS and the number of times ive been able to install something 'normally' (not via nixpkgs/flake) is approximately zero. You cant go to a website and download a binary and just run it. Almost every program references a shared library and wont be able to find it.

Nixpkgs is very complete in my experience, and in the instances where its not, someone usually has made a flake. The only times ive had to custom-make a flake were extremely new programs, or extremely old ones. Often the newer programs had PRs waiting on nixpkgs anyway, and were only a few days away from building properly in nixos-unstable.

	▲	hombre_fatal 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They said Nix, so I was thinking about macOS + nix-darwin when I wrote that. You're right. When I tried using NixOS as my main desktop experience for a few months, I ended up with a custom derivation for various apps I used. That's probably why I made the claude code and cursor modules in the first place. But I'm also remembering I made my own keepassxc module because keepassxc wants to be able to write to its config file, but I also want to configure it from nix, so I had to make my module use an activation-time script to merge nix config into the keepassxc config file. I lost interest in NixOS for day to day personal computing, though vibe-coding modules like that wasn't as big of a dealbreaker as there being almost zero laptops that compete with a Macbook. The other pain is Linux desktop environment stuff in general like dealing with interactions between a Steam game, wayland, and wayland-satellite. Though NixOS helped there since it was easy for an AI agent to investigate the issue, inspect the nix config, and make a targeted, commented patch that shows up in git.
	▲	gallexme an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Usually u can run almost any binary by setting up once a fhs. Or using steam-run And there's also nix alien and similar tools as alternative But indeed usually you end up using patchelf , tell the inputs of a binary n just make a regular nix package from it