1. Get Nix running on your system
→ Get Nix running on your Linux or macOS system using nix-installer
→ Verify that your installed Nix is working as expected
We wrote this Zero to Nix quick start with one specific audience in mind: people who have heard about Nix but don’t yet know much about it and aren’t quite sure where to start. We intend it less as a how-to guide for using Nix in your everyday workflows and more to provide you a glimpse into Nix’s feature set and some of those initial “a-ha!” moments that make you feel empowered to go further.
If you’re already familiar with Nix and are looking for guidance on using it in your day job, you may still get some value out of the quick start but you may be better served with more practical, guide-driven resources like nix.dev.
Welcome! It’s great to see that you’re interested in Nix. In this quick start, we’ll get Determinate Nix installed on your system. Then we’ll provide you with a small taste of Nix’s feature set by accomplishing some practical things, such as creating a development environment and building a package using Nix.
Determinate Nix is Determinate Systems’ downstream distribution of the upstream Nix project. It offers a variety of features not available in the upstream version, such as lazy trees, parallel evaluation, and the native Linux builder.
We’ll install Determinate Nix using Determinate Nix Installer, a tool that tailors the installation process to your system. It supports these platforms:
macOS
64-bit ARM and 64-bit AMD/Intel
Linux
64-bit ARM and 64-bit AMD/Intel
64-bit ARM and 64-bit AMD/Intel
Install Determinate Nix
On macOS, we recommend using our package installer:
Or if you prefer the command line:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- installOn Linux, we recommend installing using the Determinate Nix Installer CLI:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- installOn Windows Subsystem for Linux, we recommend installing using the Determinate Nix Installer CLI:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- install
Installation is also available via several
Once the installer has finished, open a new terminal session and the nix executable should be in your $PATH.
To verify that:
nix --versionThis should print the version information.
🚀 Success! You now have Determinate Nix installed and ready to go on your system.