How To Install nix-bin on Ubuntu

Posted on April 1, 2023 (Last modified on May 20, 2023 )

2 minutes • 419 words

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install nix-bin on Ubuntu.

What is `nix-bin`

nix-bin is:

A powerful package manager for Linux and other Unix systems that makes package management reliable and reproducible. Nix provides atomic upgrades and rollbacks, side-by-side installation of multiple versions of a package, multi-user package management and easy setup of build environments.

NOTE: This package only provides the nix binaries. One still needs to setup directories, environments variables and configuration files to use nix as described in the nix manual. The package nix-setup-systemd provides such a setup using systemd mechanisms, also see /usr/share/doc/nix-bin/README.Debian.

There are three methods to install nix-bin on Ubuntu. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install nix-bin Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install nix-bin using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install nix-bin

Install nix-bin Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install nix-bin using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install nix-bin

Install nix-bin Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install nix-bin using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install nix-bin

How To Uninstall nix-bin on Ubuntu

To uninstall only the nix-bin package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove nix-bin

Uninstall nix-bin And Its Dependencies

To uninstall nix-bin and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove nix-bin

Remove nix-bin Configurations and Data

To remove nix-bin configuration and data from Ubuntu we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge nix-bin

Remove nix-bin configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove nix-bin configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge nix-bin

Dependencies

nix-bin have the following dependencies:

References

nix-bin website

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install nix-bin package on Ubuntu using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.