 | Nix on macOS | 1190 Members |
| “There are still many issues with the Darwin platform but most of it is quite usable.” — http://yves.gnu-darwin.org | 200 Servers |
| Nix on macOS | 1190 Members |
| “There are still many issues with the Darwin platform but most of it is quite usable.” — http://yves.gnu-darwin.org | 200 Servers |
| Sender | Message | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 12 Mar 2026 | ||
 ragdoc | Rumour has it that the A18 can't handle more than 8 GB, but I am not a hardware guy. Does anybody here know if this technical limitation really exists? | 15:09:51 |
| ragdoc | It's certainly a clear line of demarcation to the Air's 16 GB, that's for sure. | 15:11:14 |
 toonn | Isn't it a technical limitation in the sense of it'd require significant engineering of the entire package because the RAM sits on top of the SOC? | 15:12:12 |
| ragdoc | Ah. That might be the case, toonn. The mainboard is tiny. | 15:13:53 |
 Randy Eckenrode | I don’t know whether it’s a technical limitation. I assumed it was done for segmentation and to keep the cost of production down. 8 GiB just kind of sucks though. | 15:15:07 |
| ragdoc | I watched a teardown video today. I did not expect the very small board. | 15:15:40 |
| ragdoc | I saw a graphic of how CPU and RAM are sandwiched, Randy Eckenrode. Makes sense in the confines of a phone, for sure. | 15:17:50 |
 emily | it's a perf thing, not a size thing (the high-end chips have RAM on the SoC too) | 15:20:16 |
| ragdoc | It's certainly nice to see that nix-darwin seems well within the Neo's comfort zone. | 15:21:29 |
 redbunnyninja | regarding 8 gb of ram: i've been on a mission to de-electronify my life and this has significantly reduced memory usage. on my m1 pro i saved about 10 gb of ram just by not using electron apps where possible. this also might push app devs to write leaner apps that don't require a packaged browser runtime to display some buttons and text | 15:35:21 |
| ragdoc | redbunnyninjaI have been developing software since the 1980s, and I find the waste of RAM and CPU cycles in 2026 nauseating. And that's with the knowledge that CS pioneers did amazing work with far less resources than I had available (and wasted) when I started in this business. | 15:46:48 |
| toonn | emily: The M series chips have the RAM on the package but next to the CPU parts, no? While A18 or whatever it was has it laid on top. I can imagine it'd require significantly more engineering to change that and they simply don't have much incentive to do so. | 16:26:53 |
 nasso | i just received my new macbook and im trying to setup nix-darwin with determinate nix but im not sure how im supposed to generate the configuration... determinate's docs say nix flake init --template "https://flakehub.com/f/DeterminateSystems/flake-templates/0#nix-darwin" but nix-darwin docs say i should create /etc/nix-darwin, chown it, and then run nix flake init -t nix-darwin/nix-darwin-25.11...im not sure how to understand any of this because i am still very unfamiliar with nix in general 😰 | 16:31:05 |
| nasso | i just received my new macbook and im trying to setup nix-darwin with determinate nix but im not sure how im supposed to generate the configuration... determinate's docs say nix flake init --template "https://flakehub.com/f/DeterminateSystems/flake-templates/0#nix-darwin"but nix-darwin docs say i should create /etc/nix-darwin, chown it, and then run nix flake init -t nix-darwin/nix-darwin-25.11...im not sure how to understand any of this because i am still very unfamiliar with nix in general 😰 | 16:31:25 |
| nasso | i just received my new macbook and im trying to setup nix-darwin with determinate nix but im not sure how im supposed to generate the configuration... determinate's docs say nix flake init --template "https://flakehub.com/f/DeterminateSystems/flake-templates/0#nix-darwin"but nix-darwin docs say i should create /etc/nix-darwin, chown it, and then run nix flake init -t nix-darwin/nix-darwin-25.11...im not sure how to understand any of this because i am still very unfamiliar with nix in general 😰 am i supposed to run nix flake init --template "https://flakehub.com/f/DeterminateSystems/flake-templates/0#nix-darwin" in ~? it creates .envrc and flake.nix files and i dont know where im supposed to put them | 16:32:48 |
| nasso | i just received my new macbook and im trying to setup nix-darwin with determinate nix but im not sure how im supposed to generate the configuration... determinate's docs say nix flake init --template "https://flakehub.com/f/DeterminateSystems/flake-templates/0#nix-darwin"but nix-darwin docs say i should create /etc/nix-darwin, chown it, and then run nix flake init -t nix-darwin/nix-darwin-25.11...im not sure how to understand any of this because i am still very unfamiliar with nix in general 😰 am i supposed to run nix flake init --template "https://flakehub.com/f/DeterminateSystems/flake-templates/0#nix-darwin" in ~? it creates .envrc and flake.nix files and i dont know where im supposed to have them | 16:32:57 |
| nasso | oh i had no realized with determinate's template you're supposed to run nix develop --command apply-nix-darwin-configuration instead of nix flake init -t nix-darwin/nix-darwin-25.11 whoopslooks like it worked! | 17:33:44 |
 WeetHet | I'm still running M1 with 8gb of RAM and it works reasonably well for most tasks | 17:38:17 |
| nasso | i did it!!! however im not sure how to configure my system preferences... of course, because i have multiple users, and system preferences are per-user, they need to somehow be defined for each user on the system and shouldn't rely on primaryUseri looked into "home manager" but i dont really understand how it can achieve that? also it seems to be not very beginner friendly (im scared) | 21:41:23 |
| nasso | is there a way i can define a default system configuration "template" that i then tweak for each user i want to apply it to? | 21:42:19 |
| nasso | (in my case, i dont think i have any user-specific setting so all users would just be using the same configuration) | 21:43:00 |
| nasso | how can i install homebrew packages with nix-darwin in a multi-user scenario? | 22:50:31 |
 axw | you can specify a target dir for each package | 23:14:35 |
| nasso | i read somewhere some people isolate homebrew with a separate user account, what does it look like in practice? is it like creating a user named brew or something and then setting up homebrew.user = "brew"? | 23:17:48 |
| nasso | oh neat! what would the target dir look like to install a cask named foo for user alice only? | 23:19:40 |
| axw | see example conf here https://mynixos.com/nix-darwin/option/homebrew.casks | 23:28:01 |
| axw | | 23:32:29 |
| axw | * | 23:35:32 |
| axw | in homebrew.casks = [] instead of just foo | 23:36:54 |
| axw | * in homebrew.casks = [] instead of just foo | 23:37:33 |