Linux.com article about Nix
There is an article on Linux.com about Nix: “Nix fixes dependency\
hell on all Linux distributions”. ⌘ Read more
Nix 0.12 released
Nix\
0.12 has been released. The most important change is that
Nix no longer needs Berkeley DB to store metadata, but there are
many other improvements. See the release\
notes for details. ⌘ Read more
DisNix paper accepted at HotSWUp
The paper “Atomic Upgrading of Distributed Systems” (by Sander
van der Burg, Eelco Dolstra and Merijn de Jonge) has been
accepted for presentation at the First ACM Workshop on Hot\
Topics in Software Upgrades (HotSWUp). A draft\
of the paper is available. It describes Sander’s master’s
thesis research on DisNix, an extension … ⌘ Read more
NixOS paper accepted at ICFP!
The paper “NixOS: A Purely Functional Linux Distribution” (by
Eelco Dolstra and Andres Löh) has been accepted
for presentation at the 2008\
International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP).
It describes NixOS in much greater detail than last year’s
HotOS paper, an … ⌘ Read more
Website back up
The Nix website was down for a few days due to cooling
problems in the server room causing the machine to overheat.
These should be resolved now. Apologies for the
inconvenience. ⌘ Read more
Website / SVN repositories moved
The Nix website has moved to nixos.org (hosted at TU Delft). The Subversion
repositories have moved to svn.nixos.org. See
this\
mailing list posting for information about moving existing
SVN working copies. ⌘ Read more
LDTA 2008 paper
Eelco Dolstra presented the paper “Maximal\
Laziness — An Efficient Interpretation Technique for Purely\
Functional DSLs” at 8th\
Workshop on Language\
Description, Tools and Applications (LDTA 2008). It’s about
caching of evaluation results in the Nix expression evaluator as
a technique to make a simple term-rewriting evaluator efficient.
Slides are [here](h … ⌘ Read more
eBay sues Craigslist
Referring to an eBay Press release:
Tainted Love – We are surprised and disappointed by Ebay’s unfounded allegations, which came to us out of the blue, without any attempt to engage in a dialogue with us.
Coming from a shareholder that views craigslist as a prime competitor, filing suit without so much as mentioning these assertions beforehand seems unethical, and … ⌘ Read more
Jacquard grant proposal accepted!
The Jacquard\
program of
NWO and EZ has granted funding for the Nix-related project “Pull
Deployment of Services” (PDS), which is about improving the
deployment of software and services in complex heterogenous
environments. The grant consists of 368 K€ for a PhD student (4
years) and a postdoc (3 years). If you’re interested in these
positions, please h … ⌘ Read more
New NixOS ISOs
New NixOS installation CD images for i686 and
x86_64 are available,
which is a good thing as the previous ones were already a few
months old. The new images are Nix 0.11-based, contain Memtest86+ as a
convenience, should support more SATA drives, an … ⌘ Read more
Yahoo! and the future of the Internet
Official Google Blog: Yahoo! and the future of the Internet
Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft – despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses – to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between the … ⌘ Read more
Nix 0.11 released
Nix\
0.11 has been released. This is a major new release
representing over a year of development. The most important
improvement is secure multi-user support. It also features many
usability enhancements and language extensions, many of them
prompted by NixOS, the purely functional Linux distribution
based on Nix. See the [release\
notes](https://web.archive.org/web/20140913055323/https://releases.nixos.org … ⌘ Read more
Want the darn thing?
Beta of XP update made public, A blog by Ina Fried, CNET News.com
Microsoft issued a release candidate version of XP SP3 in November and expanded its testing earlier this month, promising the public test version would come at some later date.
For anyone who still wants to try the darn thing, Microsoft says, the beta should be up on Microsoft’s Web site later Tuesday and ready in final for … ⌘ Read more
Nixpkgs 0.11 released
Nixpkgs\
0.11 has been released. See the release\
notes for details. ⌘ Read more
OpenOffice in Nixpkgs
Nixpkgs ( screenshot of\ OpenOffice 2.2.1 running under NixOS, and another\ screenshot). Despite being a rather gigantic package (it
takes two hours to compile on an In … ⌘ Read more
NixOS progress report
Finally we can run all those legacy\ applications… Thanks to Michael Raskin for adding Wine
and a NPTL-enabled Glibc (which Wine seems to need). This is a
nice application of purely functional package composition, by
the way: Wine didn’t work with the standard Glibc in Nixpkgs, … ⌘ Read more
Commits mailing list
There is now a mailing\
list (nix-commits@cs.uu.nl) that you can
subscribe to if you want to receive automatic commit
notifications from the Nix Subversion repository. ⌘ Read more
Write Articles, Not Blog Postings
Write Articles, Not Blog Postings – Jakob Nielsens Alertbox
Boy, do I agree with Nielsen on this one. I have been guilty of many of the things he points out. That is why I am scribbling less lately. And it will be much less in the future. Totally dislike the “tumbler” generation. Junk. ⌘ Read more
HotOS paper on NixOS
Eelco Dolstra presented the paper Purely\
Functional System\
Configuration Management at the 11th Workshop on\
Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS XI). It gives an
overview of the ideas behind NixOS. The
slides
are also available. ⌘ Read more
We now have KDE running on
NixOS ( obligatory\
screenshot). Just kdebase for now (Martin
Bravenboer already added kdelibs a long time ago so
that we could run the wonderful KCachegrind),
but it contains all the important stuff (Konqueror, KDesktop,
Kicker, Konsole, Control Center, … ⌘ Read more
NixOS progress report
NixOS is now almost usable as a desktop OS ;-). We
have an X server, a bunch of Gnome packages, basic wireless
support, and of course all the applications in Nixpkgs that we
had all along running on other Linux distributions. Here are a
few screenshots:
- X server\
with Compiz window manager.
- [Emacs a … ⌘ Read more
NixOS manual
There is now some basic\
documentation for NixOS. ⌘ Read more
New build farm hardware at TUD
To quote
Eelco Visser: new
hardware for buildfarm at Delft University of Technology has
arrived.
Here’s what we have: 5 Intel Core 2 Duo DualCore machines
with 1GB RAM, 2 Mac minis with 1,83-GHz Intel Core
Duo-processor, another Core 2 Duo a UPS to deal with spikes in
power supp … ⌘ Read more
Nixpkgs 0.10 released
Nixpkgs\
0.10 has been released. See the release\
notes for details. ⌘ Read more
Nix 0.10.1 released
Nix\
0.10.1 has been released. It fixes two obscure bugs that
shouldn’t affect most users. ⌘ Read more
Nix 0.10 released
Nix\
0.10 has been released. This release has many
improvements and bug fixes; see the release\
notes for details. ⌘ Read more
Nixpkgs 0.9 released
Nixpkgs\
0.9 has been released. ⌘ Read more
PhD thesis defended
Eelco Dolstra
defended his PhD\
thesis on the purely functional deployment model. ⌘ Read more
Nix 0.9.2 released
Nix\
0.9.2 has been released released. This is a bug fix
release that addresses some problems on Mac OS X. ⌘ Read more
Nix 0.9 released
Nix 0.9
has been released. This is a new major release that provides
quite a few performance improvements and bug fixes, as well as a
number of new features. Read the release\
notes for details. ⌘ Read more
Secure sharing paper accepted for ASE 2005
The paper “Secure Sharing Between Untrusted Users in a
Transparent Source/Binary Deployment Model” has been accepted at
ASE 2005. This
paper describes how a Nix store can be securely shared by
multiple users who may not trust each other; i.e., how do we
prevent one user from installing a Trojan horse that is
subsequently executed by some other user? ⌘ Read more
Service deployment paper accepted for SCM-12
The paper “Service Configuration Management” (accepted at the
12th\
International Workshop on Software Configuration\
Management) describes how we can rather easily deploy
“services” (e.g., complete webserver configurations such as our
Subversion server) through
Nix by treating the non-component parts (such as configur … ⌘ Read more
Patching paper accepted for CBSE 2005
The paper “Efficient Upgrading in a Purely Functional Component
Deployment Model” has been accepted at CBSE 2005.
It describes how we can deploy updates to Nix packages
efficiently, even if “fundamental” packages like Glibc are
updated (which cause a rebuild of all dependent packages), by
deploying binary patches between components in the Nix store.
Includes tec … ⌘ Read more
Way too early
I woke up at 7:00 AM today, perhaps a bit earlier. The same thing happens every weekend, I cannot sleep as I wish, my internal clock just wouldn’t stop buzzing. So here I am, reading my favourites blogs and news sites, while feeling stressed about Monday (or should I say Sunday night?) morning changes at work. It is the weekend, for God’s sake! I shouldn’t be worrying about anything in the future related to work. I wish it was that easy.
On Linux I know, after years of experience, things work o … ⌘ Read more
**Paper “Imposing a Memory Management Discipline on Software
Deployment” accepted for presentation at ICSE 2004!**
The first Nix paper. ⌘ Read more
Like a Phoenix
Just like a Phoenix, this is a rebirth from my own ashes. I wanted to change things around here, perhaps change the way I write. Finally, I have decided to come back on a more informal way. Like it was in the beginning, when I decided that blogging could be a fun thing to do.
How informal will it be? Well, as informal as life itself — at least, mine —. I will write things that happen to me, my family, my friends and fellow human beings in general. I will not hold back just because I may think m … ⌘ Read more
Redesign on the horizon
Pretty soon I will be redesigning. I am not sure what I will do yet, but the main site will change. Additionally, I will be adding an extra blog using MT (Movable Type).
On the main site I am not sure whether to go simplistic or zeldmanian, but changes are due, since I am also changing the way I have been writing lately. The domain Collantes.US will become the echo of my thoughts on technology, science, religion, politics and everything else in between. Stay tuned, if you want. Or … ⌘ Read more