Getting Nix

Below you will find installation instructions for Nix, the package manager. Nix is currently supported on Linux and Mac. The latest stable release is 2.3.4.

The quickest way to install Nix is to open a terminal and run the following command (as a user other than root with sudo permission):
curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh

Make sure to follow the instructions output by the script.

The installation script requires that you have sudo access to root.

You may want to verify the integrity of the installation script using GPG:

curl -o install-nix-2.3.4 https://releases.nixos.org/nix/nix-2.3.4/install
curl -o install-nix-2.3.4.asc https://releases.nixos.org/nix/nix-2.3.4/install.asc
gpg2 --recv-keys B541D55301270E0BCF15CA5D8170B4726D7198DE
gpg2 --verify ./install-nix-2.3.4.asc
sh ./install-nix-2.3.4

The signing key has fingerprint B541 D553 0127 0E0B CF15 CA5D 8170 B472 6D71 98DE. It is also available on GitHub.

You can uninstall Nix simply by running rm -rf /nix.

The following release items are also available:

Getting NixOS

Below you will find installation instructions for NixOS, the Linux distribution. The latest stable release series is 20.03.

You can install NixOS on physical hardware by burning one of the CD images onto a blank CD/DVD disk, or by copying it onto a USB stick. For installation instructions, please see the manual.

Please note that NixOS at the moment lacks a nice, user-friendly graphical installer. Therefore this form of installation may not be suitable for novice Linux users.

The graphical installation CD contains the NixOS installer as well as the KDE Desktop and several applications. It’s a live CD, so it allows you to get an impression of NixOS (and the Nix package manager) without installing it.

The minimal installation CD does not contain the graphical user interface, and is therefore a lot smaller. You have to run the installer from the console. It contains a number of rescue tools.

This is a demo appliance for VirtualBox (in OVA format) that has X11 and Plasma 5 enabled, as well as the VirtualBox guest additions. To use it, download the OVA file, open VirtualBox, run “File → Import Appliance” from the menu, select the OVA file, and click “Import”. You can then start the virtual machine. When the KDE login screen appears, you can log in as user demo, password demo. To obtain a root shell, run sudo -i in the KDE terminal (konsole).

If you are an EC2 user, you can deploy a NixOS instance instantly in your preferred region by using one of the AMIs listed below.

Region Root storage Virtualisation AMI
ap-east-1 EBS Hardware ami-0d18fdd309cdefa86 Launch
ap-northeast-1 EBS Hardware ami-093d9cc49c191eb6c Launch
ap-northeast-2 EBS Hardware ami-0087df91a7b6ebd45 Launch
ap-south-1 EBS Hardware ami-0a1a6b569af04af9d Launch
ap-southeast-1 EBS Hardware ami-0dbf353e168d155f7 Launch
ap-southeast-2 EBS Hardware ami-04c0f3a75f63daddd Launch
ca-central-1 EBS Hardware ami-02365684a173255c7 Launch
eu-central-1 EBS Hardware ami-0a1a94722dcbff94c Launch
eu-north-1 EBS Hardware ami-02699abfacbb6464b Launch
eu-west-1 EBS Hardware ami-02c34db5766cc7013 Launch
eu-west-2 EBS Hardware ami-0e32bd8c7853883f1 Launch
eu-west-3 EBS Hardware ami-061edb1356c1d69fd Launch
sa-east-1 EBS Hardware ami-09859378158ae971d Launch
us-east-1 EBS Hardware ami-0c5e7760748b74e85 Launch
us-east-2 EBS Hardware ami-030296bb256764655 Launch
us-west-1 EBS Hardware ami-050be818e0266b741 Launch
us-west-2 EBS Hardware ami-06562f78dca68eda2 Launch

You can create an instance using the AWS Management Console by clicking one of the Launch buttons. You can also create an instance from the command line. For example, to create an instance in region eu-west-1 using the EC2 API tools, just run:

$ ec2-run-instances  --region eu-west-1 -k my-key-pair

Unstable releases

If you are a developer who wants to contribute to NixOS, or if you just want the latest and greatest, you can also install the most recent unstable release.