| 21 Jan 2026 |
 K900 | If you want to run a Linux VM on OSX, you can already do that with qemu | 13:02:11 |
| K900 | That's how the nix-darwin linux builders are set up | 13:02:21 |
 eveeifyeve | I am talking about natively. | 13:02:38 |
| eveeifyeve | * I am talking about natively, not QEMU. | 13:02:45 |
| eveeifyeve | * I am talking about natively (apple framework), not QEMU. | 13:02:55 |
| K900 | QEMU uses Apple frameworks under the hood? | 13:03:12 |
| K900 | It's hardware accelerated, anyway | 13:03:45 |
| eveeifyeve | Does it? Because I thought it doesn't and the reason it has performance issues.. | 13:04:27 |
| K900 | It's definitely hardware accelerated and I don't know about "performance issues" | 13:05:11 |
| K900 | Unless you mean, like, graphics, in which case the problem is very much Not That | 13:05:18 |
| eveeifyeve | Hardware accelerated, but the real question is that if it uses https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization | 13:06:49 |
| K900 | Why does that matter exactly? | 13:07:25 |
| eveeifyeve | * Hardware accelerated could still mean emulated, but the real question is that if it uses https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization | 13:07:27 |
 Ihar Hrachyshka | It's accelerated and performant enough, at one point I did my Linux development in a nixpkgs VM, ran kind clusters and such. | 13:07:32 |
| eveeifyeve | https://determinate.systems/blog/changelog-determinate-nix-384/#why | 13:08:27 |
| K900 | And? | 13:08:57 |
 Steve | Hi there, I'm attempting to create an installation image using nix-community/nixos-generators on macOS, but I'm encountering strange issues related to my "$HOME" environment variable. When I execute nix build as a regular user, it reports that $HOME is set to "/build", which is not the case. However, when I "sudo nix build", it reports that $HOME is set to my user directory (not root?). Nevertheless, it then complains that the directory is not owned by root.
Has anyone encountered such unusual behavior before? I'm at a loss for what to do. I would greatly appreciate any insights or suggestions you may have. Thank you in advance for your assistance.
| 13:10:54 |
| K900 | I'd be really surprised if that actually works on a Darwin host tbh | 13:11:24 |
 Katalin 🔪 | sudo does not reset $HOME | 13:12:17 |
| Katalin 🔪 | add -i | 13:12:18 |
| Ihar Hrachyshka | I did use nixos-generators on Darwin to create virtualbox images. Why wouldn't it work? | 13:12:54 |
| K900 | Because you'd have to build some NixOS bits presumably? | 13:13:32 |
| Steve | That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Just for UTM. | 13:13:42 |
| Ihar Hrachyshka | Oh sure but you always have a Linux builder. | 13:14:00 |
| eveeifyeve | Looking at QEMU source code, it unfortunately doesn't. | 13:14:01 |
| K900 | I am still confused why you think this even matters | 13:14:15 |
| K900 | I don't know what exactly it does | 13:14:21 |
| K900 | But it does not introduce major CPU overhead | 13:14:29 |
| K900 | So I'm not sure what your problem is | 13:14:33 |
| Steve | -i brings "unrecognized flag". I'm using determinate Nix. Is that maybe the problem? | 13:14:39 |
