nix-in-brief

nib (Nix In Brief) is a brew-like package manager wrapper for Nix on standard Linux distros (Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.).

Nix has one of the largest, most up-to-date package repositories available, including packages that aren't available via Homebrew on Linux (such as ghostty). nib makes it feel familiar.

Why nib?

• Single command to install, upgrade, search, and remove packages
• No sudo required for day-to-day operations
• Packages are always up to date — nixpkgs has ~100,000 packages
• Works on Fedora (including SELinux) and Ubuntu out of the box
• nib health and nib doctor to keep your system integration in good shape

Installation

Quick start (installs Nix too)

git clone https://github.com/SuperMatt/nix-in-brief.git
cd nix-in-brief
make install
nib setup

nib setup installs Nix via the Determinate Systems installer (handles Fedora SELinux automatically) and places nib in ~/.local/bin.

If Nix is already installed

make install

Requires Go 1.21+.

Usage

nib install <pkg>...     Install packages from nixpkgs
nib remove <pkg>...      Remove installed packages
nib upgrade              Upgrade all installed packages (skips pinned)
nib outdated             Show packages with newer versions available
nib pin <pkg>...         Pin packages so they are skipped during upgrade
nib unpin <pkg>...       Unpin packages
nib search <term>        Search nixpkgs
nib info <pkg>           Show package details
nib list                 List installed packages
nib rollback             Undo the last install/remove/upgrade

nib health               Show status of nib prerequisites
nib doctor               Diagnose and fix issues interactively

nib setup                Install Nix and copy nib to ~/.local/bin
nib uninstall-nix        Fully remove Nix and all packages

nib version              Print the nib version

Pass -v / --verbose to any command to see unfiltered nix output (warnings, traces, evaluation messages are suppressed by default).

Examples

nib install ghostty helix chezmoi starship
nib install nerd-fonts.monaspace
nib search ripgrep
nib upgrade
nib rollback

Fonts

Nix installs fonts to ~/.nix-profile/share/fonts. On non-NixOS systems fontconfig doesn't know to look there by default. Run nib doctor to register the font path automatically.

GPU apps (ghostty, etc.)

On non-NixOS Linux, GPU-accelerated apps installed via nix may fail to launch due to OpenGL driver mismatch. nib health will warn if a GPU app is installed without a workaround in place. Run nib doctor to install and activate nix-system-graphics automatically — a permanent system-wide fix that requires no per-command wrapper.

Alternatively, install a per-command wrapper manually:

nixGL

nix profile add github:nix-community/nixGL#nixGLIntel    # Intel or AMD
nix profile add github:nix-community/nixGL#nixGLNvidia   # Nvidia
nixGL ghostty

nix-gl-host (auto-detects driver)

nix profile add github:numtide/nix-gl-host
nix-gl-host ghostty

For Nvidia with nix-system-graphics, see the upstream docs for the additional driver configuration required.

Building

make install   # build and install to ~/.local/bin/nib
make clean     # remove installed binary

Development

Running tests

make test

Versioning

Versions come from git tags. make install injects the version at build time using git describe --tags --always --dirty:

• Clean tagged build → v0.1.0
• Commits after a tag → v0.1.0-3-gabcdef
• Uncommitted changes → v0.1.0-dirty

To cut a release:

git tag v0.2.0
git push --tags
make install   # nib version → v0.2.0

For remote installs (go install github.com/SuperMatt/nix-in-brief/cmd/nib@latest), Go's build info provides the version automatically — no ldflags needed.

Requirements

• Linux (Fedora or Ubuntu recommended)
• Go 1.21+ (to build)
• Nix (installed automatically by nib setup)

License

MIT