NixOS

NixOS is an independent, functional and usable GNU/Linux distribution that uses the KDE Plasma Workspaces and Applications as its default desktop environment. It is called NixOS because it’s based on Nix, a purely functional package management system.

Nix is similar to APT and YUM

Similar to APT and YUM, the Nix package manager makes sure that no package is broken during upgrades. It also manages boot scripts, configuration files, and other similar files that are involved in the package management of a Linux distribution.

It can only be installed, no live mode!

The CD allows users to install the NixOS operating system, but it can’t be used directly from the live media. It provides support for Nvidia, ATI and Intel graphics cards, LVM (Logical Volume Manager) and RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). Currently, NixOS can be installed on both 64-bit and 32-bit architectures, it uses some GTK applications, but most of the user interface is KDE based. Automatic hardware detection will make sure that all your hardware components are recognized and configured during the installation process.

KDE is the default desktop environment

Its KDE desktop environment is mostly untouched, providing all the applications that one needs on a daily basis, such as the Dolphin file manager, the Konqueror web browser, the KMail email client, Dragon Player, and much more. All the software packages are managed by the state of the art Nix package manager software, and there’s no /bin, /sbin, /lib, /usr filesystem hierarchy. Everything is stored in the /nix/store directory.

Contains popular Linux applications

Those of you who want to use a different desktop environment, can do so by installing Xfce, Awesome, IceWM, i3, and even the Ratpoison window manager. Popular Linux applications, such as Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, and VLC Media Player can also be installed in NixOS. Among other strong points of NixOS, we can mention multi-user package management, reproducible system configurations, atomic and reliable upgrades, and rollbacks, which allow users to safely roll back to a previous configuration.

What is new in this release:

• Highlights:
• The GNOME version is now 3.24. KDE Plasma was upgraded to 5.10, KDE Applications to 17.08.1 and KDE Frameworks to 5.37.
• The user handling now keeps track of deallocated UIDs/GIDs. When a user or group is revived, this allows it to be allocated the UID/GID it had before. A consequence is that UIDs and GIDs are no longer reused.
• The module option services.xserver.xrandrHeads now causes the first head specified in this list to be set as the primary head. Apart from that, it's now possible to also set additional options by using an attribute set, for example:
• { services.xserver.xrandrHeads = [
• "HDMI-0"
• output = "DVI-0";
• primary = true;
• monitorConfig = ''
• Option "Rotate" "right"
• '';
• This will set the DVI-0 output to be the primary head, even though HDMI-0 is the first head in the list.
• The handling of SSL in the services.nginx module has been cleaned up, renaming the misnamed enableSSL to onlySSL which reflects its original intention. This is not to be used with the already existing forceSSL which creates a second non-SSL virtual host redirecting to the SSL virtual host. This by chance had worked earlier due to specific implementation details. In case you had specified both please remove the enableSSL option to keep the previous behaviour.
• Another addSSL option has been introduced to configure both a non-SSL virtual host and an SSL virtual host with the same configuration.
• Options to configure resolver options and upstream blocks have been introduced. See their information for further details.
• The port option has been replaced by a more generic listen option which makes it possible to specify multiple addresses, ports and SSL configs dependant on the new SSL handling mentioned above.
• New Services:
• The following new services were added since the last release:
• config/fonts/fontconfig-penultimate.nix
• config/fonts/fontconfig-ultimate.nix
• config/terminfo.nix
• hardware/sensor/iio.nix
• hardware/nitrokey.nix
• hardware/raid/hpsa.nix
• programs/browserpass.nix
• programs/gnupg.nix
• programs/qt5ct.nix
• programs/slock.nix
• programs/thefuck.nix
• security/auditd.nix
• security/lock-kernel-modules.nix
• service-managers/docker.nix
• service-managers/trivial.nix
• services/admin/salt/master.nix
• services/admin/salt/minion.nix
• services/audio/slimserver.nix
• services/cluster/kubernetes/default.nix
• services/cluster/kubernetes/dns.nix
• services/cluster/kubernetes/dashboard.nix
• services/continuous-integration/hail.nix
• services/databases/clickhouse.nix
• services/databases/postage.nix
• services/desktops/gnome3/gnome-disks.nix
• services/desktops/gnome3/gpaste.nix
• services/logging/SystemdJournal2Gelf.nix
• services/logging/heartbeat.nix
• services/logging/journalwatch.nix
• services/logging/syslogd.nix
• services/mail/mailhog.nix
• services/mail/nullmailer.nix
• services/misc/airsonic.nix
• services/misc/autorandr.nix
• services/misc/exhibitor.nix
• services/misc/fstrim.nix
• services/misc/gollum.nix
• services/misc/irkerd.nix
• services/misc/jackett.nix
• services/misc/radarr.nix
• services/misc/snapper.nix
• services/monitoring/osquery.nix
• services/monitoring/prometheus/collectd-exporter.nix
• services/monitoring/prometheus/fritzbox-exporter.nix
• services/network-filesystems/kbfs.nix
• services/networking/dnscache.nix
• services/networking/fireqos.nix
• services/networking/iwd.nix
• services/networking/keepalived/default.nix
• services/networking/keybase.nix
• services/networking/lldpd.nix
• services/networking/matterbridge.nix
• services/networking/squid.nix
• services/networking/tinydns.nix
• services/networking/xrdp.nix
• services/security/shibboleth-sp.nix
• services/security/sks.nix
• services/security/sshguard.nix
• services/security/torify.nix
• services/security/usbguard.nix
• services/security/vault.nix
• services/system/earlyoom.nix
• services/system/saslauthd.nix
• services/web-apps/nexus.nix
• services/web-apps/pgpkeyserver-lite.nix
• services/web-apps/piwik.nix
• services/web-servers/lighttpd/collectd.nix
• services/web-servers/minio.nix
• services/x11/display-managers/xpra.nix
• services/x11/xautolock.nix
• tasks/filesystems/bcachefs.nix
• tasks/powertop.nix
• Backward Incompatibilities:
• When upgrading from a previous release, please be aware of the following incompatible changes:
• In an Qemu-based virtualization environment, the network interface names changed from i.e. enp0s3 to ens3.
• This is due to a kernel configuration change. The new naming is consistent with those of other Linux distributions with systemd. See #29197 for more information.
• A machine is affected if the virt-what tool either returns qemu or kvm and has interface names used in any part of its NixOS configuration, in particular if a static network configuration with networking.interfaces is used.
• Before rebooting affected machines, please ensure:
• Change the interface names in your NixOS configuration. The first interface will be called ens3, the second one ens8 and starting from there incremented by 1.
• After changing the interface names, rebuild your system with nixos-rebuild boot to activate the new configuration after a reboot. If you switch to the new configuration right away you might lose network connectivity! If using nixops, deploy with nixops deploy --force-reboot.
• The following changes apply if the stateVersion is changed to 17.09 or higher. For stateVersion = "17.03" or lower the old behavior is preserved.
• The postgres default version was changed from 9.5 to 9.6.
• The postgres superuser name has changed from root to postgres to more closely follow what other Linux distributions are doing.
• The postgres default dataDir has changed from /var/db/postgres to /var/lib/postgresql/$psqlSchema where $psqlSchema is 9.6 for example.
• The mysql default dataDir has changed from /var/mysql to /var/lib/mysql.
• Radicale's default package has changed from 1.x to 2.x. Instructions to migrate can be found here . It is also possible to use the newer version by setting the package to radicale2, which is done automatically when stateVersion is 17.09 or higher. The extraArgs option has been added to allow passing the data migration arguments specified in the instructions; see the radicale.nix NixOS test for an example migration.
• The aiccu package was removed. This is due to SixXS sunsetting its IPv6 tunnel.
• The fanctl package and fan module have been removed due to the developers not upstreaming their iproute2 patches and lagging with compatibility to recent iproute2 versions.
• Top-level idea package collection was renamed. All JetBrains IDEs are now at jetbrains.
• flexget's state database cannot be upgraded to its new internal format, requiring removal of any existing db-config.sqlite which will be automatically recreated.
• The ipfs service now doesn't ignore the dataDir option anymore. If you've ever set this option to anything other than the default you'll have to either unset it (so the default gets used) or migrate the old data manually with
• dataDir=< valueOfDataDir >
• mv /var/lib/ipfs/.ipfs/* $dataDir
• rmdir /var/lib/ipfs/.ipfs
• The caddy service was previously using an extra .caddy directory in the data directory specified with the dataDir option. The contents of the .caddy directory are now expected to be in the dataDir.
• The ssh-agent user service is not started by default anymore. Use programs.ssh.startAgent to enable it if needed. There is also a new programs.gnupg.agent module that creates a gpg-agent user service. It can also serve as a SSH agent if enableSSHSupport is set.
• The services.tinc.networks.< name >.listenAddress option had a misleading name that did not correspond to its behavior. It now correctly defines the ip to listen for incoming connections on. To keep the previous behaviour, use services.tinc.networks.< name >.bindToAddress instead. Refer to the description of the options for more details.
• tlsdate package and module were removed. This is due to the project being dead and not building with openssl 1.1.
• wvdial package and module were removed. This is due to the project being dead and not building with openssl 1.1.
• cc-wrapper's setup-hook now exports a number of environment variables corresponding to binutils binaries, (e.g. LD, STRIP, RANLIB, etc). This is done to prevent packages' build systems guessing, which is harder to predict, especially when cross-compiling. However, some packages have broken due to this-their build systems either not supporting, or claiming to support without adequate testing, taking such environment variables as parameters.
• services.firefox.syncserver now runs by default as a non-root user. To accomodate this change, the default sqlite database location has also been changed. Migration should work automatically. Refer to the description of the options for more details.
• The compiz window manager and package was removed. The system support had been broken for several years.
• Touchpad support should now be enabled through libinput as synaptics is now deprecated. See the option services.xserver.libinput.enable.
• grsecurity/PaX support has been dropped, following upstream's decision to cease free support. See upstream's announcement for more information. No complete replacement for grsecurity/PaX is available presently.
• services.mysql now has declarative configuration of databases and users with the ensureDatabases and ensureUsers options.
• These options will never delete existing databases and users, especially not when the value of the options are changed.
• The MySQL users will be identified using Unix socket authentication. This authenticates the Unix user with the same name only, and that without the need for a password.
• If you have previously created a MySQL root user with a password, you will need to add root user for unix socket authentication before using the new options. This can be done by running the following SQL script:
• CREATE USER 'root'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY '';
• GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;
• FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
• -- Optionally, delete the password-authenticated user:
• -- DROP USER 'root'@'localhost';
• sha256 argument value of dockerTools.pullImage expression must be updated since the mechanism to download the image has been changed. Skopeo is now used to pull the image instead of the Docker daemon.
• services.mysqlBackup now works by default without any user setup, including for users other than mysql.
• By default, the mysql user is no longer the user which performs the backup. Instead a system account mysqlbackup is used.
• The mysqlBackup service is also now using systemd timers instead of cron.
• Therefore, the services.mysqlBackup.period option no longer exists, and has been replaced with services.mysqlBackup.calendar, which is in the format of systemd.time(7).
• If you expect to be sent an e-mail when the backup fails, consider using a script which monitors the systemd journal for errors. Regretfully, at present there is no built-in functionality for this.
• You can check that backups still work by running systemctl start mysql-backup then systemctl status mysql-backup.
• Templated systemd services e.g container@name are now handled currectly when switching to a new configuration, resulting in them being reloaded.
• Steam: the newStdcpp parameter was removed and should not be needed anymore.
• Redis has been updated to version 4 which mandates a cluster mass-restart, due to changes in the network handling, in order to ensure compatibility with networks NATing traffic.
• Other Notable Changes:
• Modules can now be disabled by using disabledModules, allowing another to take it's place. This can be used to import a set of modules from another channel while keeping the rest of the system on a stable release.
• Updated to FreeType 2.7.1, including a new TrueType engine. The new engine replaces the Infinality engine which was the default in NixOS. The default font rendering settings are now provided by fontconfig-penultimate, replacing fontconfig-ultimate; the new defaults are less invasive and provide rendering that is more consistent with other systems and hopefully with each font designer's intent. Some system-wide configuration has been removed from the Fontconfig NixOS module where user Fontconfig settings are available.
• ZFS/SPL have been updated to 0.7.0, zfsUnstable, splUnstable have therefore been removed.
• The time.timeZone option now allows the value null in addition to timezone strings. This value allows changing the timezone of a system imperatively using timedatectl set-timezone. The default timezone is still UTC.
• Nixpkgs overlays may now be specified with a file as well as a directory. The value of < nixpkgs-overlays > may be a file, and ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays.nix can be used instead of the ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays directory.
• See the overlays chapter of the Nixpkgs manual for more details.
• Definitions for /etc/hosts can now be specified declaratively with networking.hosts.
• Two new options have been added to the installer loader, in addition to the default having changed. The kernel log verbosity has been lowered to the upstream default for the default options, in order to not spam the console when e.g. joining a network.
• This therefore leads to adding a new debug option to set the log level to the previous verbose mode, to make debugging easier, but still accessible easily.
• Additionally a copytoram option has been added, which makes it possible to remove the install medium after booting. This allows tethering from your phone after booting from it.
• services.gitlab-runner.configOptions has been added to specify the configuration of gitlab-runners declaratively.
• services.jenkins.plugins has been added to install plugins easily, this can be generated with jenkinsPlugins2nix.
• services.postfix.config has been added to specify the main.cf with NixOS options. Additionally other options have been added to the postfix module and has been improved further.
• The GitLab package and module have been updated to the latest 10.0 release.
• The systemd-boot boot loader now lists the NixOS version, kernel version and build date of all bootable generations.
• The dnscrypt-proxy service now defaults to using a random upstream resolver, selected from the list of public non-logging resolvers with DNSSEC support. Existing configurations can be migrated to this mode of operation by omitting the services.dnscrypt-proxy.resolverName option or setting it to "random".

What is new in version 17.03:

• Nixpkgs is now extensible through overlays. See the Nixpkgs manual for more information.
• This release is based on Glibc 2.25, GCC 5.4.0 and systemd 232. The default Linux kernel is 4.9 and Nix is at 1.11.8.
• The default desktop environment now is KDE's Plasma 5. KDE 4 has been removed
• The setuid wrapper functionality now supports setting capabilities.
• X.org server uses branch 1.19. Due to ABI incompatibilities, ati_unfree keeps forcing 1.17 and amdgpu-pro starts forcing 1.18.
• Cross compilation has been rewritten. See the nixpkgs manual for details. The most obvious breaking change is that in derivations there is no .nativeDrv nor .crossDrv are now cross by default, not native.
• The overridePackages function has been rewritten to be replaced by overlays
• Packages in nixpkgs can be marked as insecure through listed vulnerabilities. See the Nixpkgs manual for more information.
• PHP now defaults to PHP 7.1
• The user handling now keeps track of deallocated UIDs/GIDs. When a user or group is revived, this allows it to be allocated the UID/GID it had before. A consequence is that UIDs and GIDs are no longer reused.

What is new in version 16.09:

• Many NixOS configurations and Nix packages now use significantly less disk space, thanks to the extensive work on closure size reduction. For example, the closure size of a minimal NixOS container went down from ~424 MiB in 16.03 to ~212 MiB in 16.09, while the closure size of Firefox went from ~651 MiB to ~259 MiB.
• To improve security, packages are now built using various hardening features. See the Nixpkgs manual for more information.
• Support for PXE netboot. See Section 2.3, "Booting from the "netboot" media (PXE)" for documentation.
• X.org server 1.18. If you use the ati_unfree driver, 1.17 is still used due to an ABI incompatibility.
• This release is based on Glibc 2.24, GCC 5.4.0 and systemd 231. The default Linux kernel remains 4.4.
• The following new services were added since the last release:
• hardware/video/amdgpu.nix
• hardware/video/displaylink.nix
• programs/info.nix
• programs/mosh.nix
• programs/spacefm.nix
• programs/tmux.nix
• programs/xonsh.nix
• security/chromium-suid-sandbox.nix
• security/hidepid.nix
• services/audio/squeezelite.nix
• services/backup/znapzend.nix
• services/continuous-integration/buildkite-agent.nix
• services/continuous-integration/hydra/default.nix
• services/continuous-integration/gocd-agent/default.nix
• services/continuous-integration/gocd-server/default.nix
• services/development/hoogle.nix
• services/editors/emacs.nix
• services/games/factorio.nix
• services/games/terraria.nix
• services/logging/awstats.nix
• services/logging/graylog.nix
• services/misc/emby.nix
• services/misc/mantisbt.nix
• services/misc/nzbget.nix
• services/misc/packagekit.nix
• services/misc/sonarr.nix
• services/misc/spice-vdagentd.nix
• services/misc/taskserver
• services/network-filesystems/tahoe.nix
• services/networking/coturn.nix
• services/networking/ferm.nix
• services/networking/gdomap.nix
• services/networking/libreswan.nix
• services/networking/logmein-hamachi.nix
• services/networking/mfi.nix
• services/networking/mjpg-streamer.nix
• services/networking/mosquitto.nix
• services/networking/nntp-proxy.nix
• services/networking/offlineimap.nix
• services/networking/pptpd.nix
• services/networking/sniproxy.nix
• services/networking/smokeping.nix
• services/networking/toxvpn.nix
• services/networking/xl2tpd.nix
• services/networking/zerobin.nix
• services/security/oauth2_proxy.nix
• services/torrent/flexget.nix
• services/web-apps/mattermost.nix
• services/web-apps/tt-rss.nix
• services/web-servers/caddy.nix
• services/web-servers/lighttpd/inginious.nix
• services/x11/compton.nix
• services/x11/xbanish.nix
• system/boot/loader/systemd-boot/systemd-boot.nix
• system/boot/plymouth.nix
• virtualisation/xe-guest-utilities.nix
• Other notable improvements:
• Revamped grsecurity/PaX support. There is now only a single general-purpose distribution kernel and the configuration interface has been streamlined. Desktop users should be able to simply set
• security.grsecurity.enable = true
• to get a reasonably secure system without having to sacrifice too much functionality. See Chapter 17, Grsecurity/PaX for documentation
• Special filesystems, like /proc, /run and others, now have the same mount options as recommended by systemd and are unified across different places in NixOS. Mount options are updated during nixos-rebuild switch if possible. One benefit from this is improved security - most such filesystems are now mounted with noexec, nodev and/or nosuid options.
• The reverse path filter was interfering with DHCPv4 server operation in the past. An exception for DHCPv4 and a new option to log packets that were dropped due to the reverse path filter was added (networking.firewall.logReversePathDrops) for easier debugging.
• Containers configuration within containers..config is now properly typed and checked. In particular, partial configurations are merged correctly.
• The directory container setuid wrapper programs, /var/setuid-wrappers, is now updated atomically to prevent failures if the switch to a new configuration is interrupted.
• services.xserver.startGnuPGAgent has been removed due to GnuPG 2.1.x bump. See how to achieve similar behavior. You might need to pkill gpg-agent after the upgrade to prevent a stale agent being in the way.
• Declarative users could share the uid due to the bug in the script handling conflict resolution.
• Gummi boot has been replaced using systemd-boot.
• Hydra package and NixOS module were added for convenience.

What is new in version 16.03:

• The release brings many improvements including Nix 1.12.2, sysyemd 229, Kernel 4.4 and many packages updates.

What is new in version 15.09:

• In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights:
• Systemd has been updated to version 217, which has numerous improvements.
• Nix has been updated to 1.8.
• NixOS is now based on Glibc 2.20.
• KDE has been updated to 4.14.
• The default Linux kernel has been updated to 3.14.
• If users.mutableUsers is enabled (the default), changes made to the declaration of a user or group will be correctly realised when running nixos-rebuild. For instance, removing a user specification from configuration.nix will cause the actual user account to be deleted. If users.mutableUsers is disabled, it is no longer necessary to specify UIDs or GIDs; if omitted, they are allocated dynamically.
• Following new services were added since the last release:
• atftpd
• bosun
• bspwm
• chronos
• collectd
• consul
• cpuminer-cryptonight
• crashplan
• dnscrypt-proxy
• docker-registry
• docker
• etcd
• fail2ban
• fcgiwrap
• fleet
• fluxbox
• gdm
• geoclue2
• gitlab
• gitolite
• gnome3.gnome-documents
• gnome3.gnome-online-miners
• gnome3.gvfs
• gnome3.seahorse
• hbase
• i2pd
• influxdb
• kubernetes
• liquidsoap
• lxc
• mailpile
• mesos
• mlmmj
• monetdb
• mopidy
• neo4j
• nsd
• openntpd
• opentsdb
• openvswitch
• parallels-guest
• peerflix
• phd
• polipo
• prosody
• radicale
• redmine
• riemann
• scollector
• seeks
• siproxd
• strongswan
• tcsd
• teamspeak3
• thermald
• torque/mrom
• torque/server
• uhub
• unifi
• znc
• zookeeper
• When upgrading from a previous release, please be aware of the following incompatible changes:
• The default version of Apache httpd is now 2.4. If you use the extraConfig option to pass literal Apache configuration text, you may need to update it - see Apache's documentation for details. If you wish to continue to use httpd 2.2, add the following line to your NixOS configuration: rogramlisting> rvices.httpd.package = pkgs.apacheHttpd_2_2; programlisting>
• PHP 5.3 has been removed because it is no longer supported by the PHP project. A migration guide is available.
• The host side of a container virtual Ethernet pair is now called ve-container-name rather than c-container-name.
• GNOME 3.10 support has been dropped. The default GNOME version is now 3.12.
• VirtualBox has been upgraded to 4.3.20 release. Users may be required to run rm -rf /tmp/.vbox*. The line imports = [ ] is no longer necessary, use services.virtualboxHost.enable = true instead.
• Also, hardening mode is now enabled by default, which means that unless you want to use USB support, you no longer need to be a member of the vboxusers group.
• Chromium has been updated to 39.0.2171.65. enablePepperPDF is now enabled by default. chromium*Wrapper packages no longer exist, because upstream removed NSAPI support. chromium-stable has been renamed to chromium.
• Python packaging documentation is now part of nixpkgs manual. To override the python packages available to a custom python you now use pkgs.pythonFull.buildEnv.override instead of pkgs.pythonFull.override.
• boot.resumeDevice = "8:6" is no longer supported. Most users will want to leave it undefined, which takes the swap partitions automatically. There is an evaluation assertion to ensure that the string starts with a slash.
• The system-wide default timezone for NixOS installations changed from CET to UTC. To choose a different timezone for your system, configure time.timeZone in configuration.nix. A fairly complete list of possible values for that setting is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones.
• GNU screen has been updated to 4.2.1, which breaks the ability to connect to sessions created by older versions of screen.
• The Intel GPU driver was updated to the 3.x prerelease version (used by most distributions) and supports DRI3 now.

What is new in version 14.12.727:

• In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights:
• Systemd has been updated to version 217, which has numerous improvements.
• Nix has been updated to 1.8.
• NixOS is now based on Glibc 2.20.
• KDE has been updated to 4.14.
• The default Linux kernel has been updated to 3.14.
• If users.mutableUsers is enabled (the default), changes made to the declaration of a user or group will be correctly realised when running nixos-rebuild. For instance, removing a user specification from configuration.nix will cause the actual user account to be deleted. If users.mutableUsers is disabled, it is no longer necessary to specify UIDs or GIDs; if omitted, they are allocated dynamically.
• Following new services were added since the last release:
• atftpd
• bosun
• bspwm
• chronos
• collectd
• consul
• cpuminer-cryptonight
• crashplan
• dnscrypt-proxy
• docker-registry
• docker
• etcd
• fail2ban
• fcgiwrap
• fleet
• fluxbox
• gdm
• geoclue2
• gitlab
• gitolite
• gnome3.gnome-documents
• gnome3.gnome-online-miners
• gnome3.gvfs
• gnome3.seahorse
• hbase
• i2pd
• influxdb
• kubernetes
• liquidsoap
• lxc
• mailpile
• mesos
• mlmmj
• monetdb
• mopidy
• neo4j
• nsd
• openntpd
• opentsdb
• openvswitch
• parallels-guest
• peerflix
• phd
• polipo
• prosody
• radicale
• redmine
• riemann
• scollector
• seeks
• siproxd
• strongswan
• tcsd
• teamspeak3
• thermald
• torque/mrom
• torque/server
• uhub
• unifi
• znc
• zookeeper
• When upgrading from a previous release, please be aware of the following incompatible changes:
• The default version of Apache httpd is now 2.4. If you use the extraConfig option to pass literal Apache configuration text, you may need to update it - see Apache's documentation for details. If you wish to continue to use httpd 2.2, add the following line to your NixOS configuration: rogramlisting> rvices.httpd.package = pkgs.apacheHttpd_2_2; programlisting>
• PHP 5.3 has been removed because it is no longer supported by the PHP project. A migration guide is available.
• The host side of a container virtual Ethernet pair is now called ve-container-name rather than c-container-name.
• GNOME 3.10 support has been dropped. The default GNOME version is now 3.12.
• VirtualBox has been upgraded to 4.3.20 release. Users may be required to run rm -rf /tmp/.vbox*. The line imports = [ ] is no longer necessary, use services.virtualboxHost.enable = true instead.
• Also, hardening mode is now enabled by default, which means that unless you want to use USB support, you no longer need to be a member of the vboxusers group.
• Chromium has been updated to 39.0.2171.65. enablePepperPDF is now enabled by default. chromium*Wrapper packages no longer exist, because upstream removed NSAPI support. chromium-stable has been renamed to chromium.
• Python packaging documentation is now part of nixpkgs manual. To override the python packages available to a custom python you now use pkgs.pythonFull.buildEnv.override instead of pkgs.pythonFull.override.
• boot.resumeDevice = "8:6" is no longer supported. Most users will want to leave it undefined, which takes the swap partitions automatically. There is an evaluation assertion to ensure that the string starts with a slash.
• The system-wide default timezone for NixOS installations changed from CET to UTC. To choose a different timezone for your system, configure time.timeZone in configuration.nix. A fairly complete list of possible values for that setting is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones.
• GNU screen has been updated to 4.2.1, which breaks the ability to connect to sessions created by older versions of screen.
• The Intel GPU driver was updated to the 3.x prerelease version (used by most distributions) and supports DRI3 now.

What is new in version 14.12.669:

• In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights:
• Systemd has been updated to version 217, which has numerous improvements.
• Nix has been updated to 1.8.
• NixOS is now based on Glibc 2.20.
• KDE has been updated to 4.14.
• The default Linux kernel has been updated to 3.14.
• If users.mutableUsers is enabled (the default), changes made to the declaration of a user or group will be correctly realised when running nixos-rebuild. For instance, removing a user specification from configuration.nix will cause the actual user account to be deleted. If users.mutableUsers is disabled, it is no longer necessary to specify UIDs or GIDs; if omitted, they are allocated dynamically.
• Following new services were added since the last release:
• atftpd
• bosun
• bspwm
• chronos
• collectd
• consul
• cpuminer-cryptonight
• crashplan
• dnscrypt-proxy
• docker-registry
• docker
• etcd
• fail2ban
• fcgiwrap
• fleet
• fluxbox
• gdm
• geoclue2
• gitlab
• gitolite
• gnome3.gnome-documents
• gnome3.gnome-online-miners
• gnome3.gvfs
• gnome3.seahorse
• hbase
• i2pd
• influxdb
• kubernetes
• liquidsoap
• lxc
• mailpile
• mesos
• mlmmj
• monetdb
• mopidy
• neo4j
• nsd
• openntpd
• opentsdb
• openvswitch
• parallels-guest
• peerflix
• phd
• polipo
• prosody
• radicale
• redmine
• riemann
• scollector
• seeks
• siproxd
• strongswan
• tcsd
• teamspeak3
• thermald
• torque/mrom
• torque/server
• uhub
• unifi
• znc
• zookeeper
• When upgrading from a previous release, please be aware of the following incompatible changes:
• The default version of Apache httpd is now 2.4. If you use the extraConfig option to pass literal Apache configuration text, you may need to update it - see Apache's documentation for details. If you wish to continue to use httpd 2.2, add the following line to your NixOS configuration: rogramlisting> rvices.httpd.package = pkgs.apacheHttpd_2_2; programlisting>
• PHP 5.3 has been removed because it is no longer supported by the PHP project. A migration guide is available.
• The host side of a container virtual Ethernet pair is now called ve-container-name rather than c-container-name.
• GNOME 3.10 support has been dropped. The default GNOME version is now 3.12.
• VirtualBox has been upgraded to 4.3.20 release. Users may be required to run rm -rf /tmp/.vbox*. The line imports = [ ] is no longer necessary, use services.virtualboxHost.enable = true instead.
• Also, hardening mode is now enabled by default, which means that unless you want to use USB support, you no longer need to be a member of the vboxusers group.
• Chromium has been updated to 39.0.2171.65. enablePepperPDF is now enabled by default. chromium*Wrapper packages no longer exist, because upstream removed NSAPI support. chromium-stable has been renamed to chromium.
• Python packaging documentation is now part of nixpkgs manual. To override the python packages available to a custom python you now use pkgs.pythonFull.buildEnv.override instead of pkgs.pythonFull.override.
• boot.resumeDevice = "8:6" is no longer supported. Most users will want to leave it undefined, which takes the swap partitions automatically. There is an evaluation assertion to ensure that the string starts with a slash.
• The system-wide default timezone for NixOS installations changed from CET to UTC. To choose a different timezone for your system, configure time.timeZone in configuration.nix. A fairly complete list of possible values for that setting is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones.
• GNU screen has been updated to 4.2.1, which breaks the ability to connect to sessions created by older versions of screen.
• The Intel GPU driver was updated to the 3.x prerelease version (used by most distributions) and supports DRI3 now.

What is new in version 14.12:

• In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights:
• Systemd has been updated to version 217, which has numerous improvements.
• Nix has been updated to 1.8.
• NixOS is now based on Glibc 2.20.
• KDE has been updated to 4.14.
• The default Linux kernel has been updated to 3.14.
• If users.mutableUsers is enabled (the default), changes made to the declaration of a user or group will be correctly realised when running nixos-rebuild. For instance, removing a user specification from configuration.nix will cause the actual user account to be deleted. If users.mutableUsers is disabled, it is no longer necessary to specify UIDs or GIDs; if omitted, they are allocated dynamically.
• Following new services were added since the last release:
• atftpd
• bosun
• bspwm
• chronos
• collectd
• consul
• cpuminer-cryptonight
• crashplan
• dnscrypt-proxy
• docker-registry
• docker
• etcd
• fail2ban
• fcgiwrap
• fleet
• fluxbox
• gdm
• geoclue2
• gitlab
• gitolite
• gnome3.gnome-documents
• gnome3.gnome-online-miners
• gnome3.gvfs
• gnome3.seahorse
• hbase
• i2pd
• influxdb
• kubernetes
• liquidsoap
• lxc
• mailpile
• mesos
• mlmmj
• monetdb
• mopidy
• neo4j
• nsd
• openntpd
• opentsdb
• openvswitch
• parallels-guest
• peerflix
• phd
• polipo
• prosody
• radicale
• redmine
• riemann
• scollector
• seeks
• siproxd
• strongswan
• tcsd
• teamspeak3
• thermald
• torque/mrom
• torque/server
• uhub
• unifi
• znc
• zookeeper
• When upgrading from a previous release, please be aware of the following incompatible changes:
• The default version of Apache httpd is now 2.4. If you use the extraConfig option to pass literal Apache configuration text, you may need to update it - see Apache's documentation for details. If you wish to continue to use httpd 2.2, add the following line to your NixOS configuration: rogramlisting> rvices.httpd.package = pkgs.apacheHttpd_2_2; programlisting>
• PHP 5.3 has been removed because it is no longer supported by the PHP project. A migration guide is available.
• The host side of a container virtual Ethernet pair is now called ve-container-name rather than c-container-name.
• GNOME 3.10 support has been dropped. The default GNOME version is now 3.12.
• VirtualBox has been upgraded to 4.3.20 release. Users may be required to run rm -rf /tmp/.vbox*. The line imports = [ ] is no longer necessary, use services.virtualboxHost.enable = true instead.
• Also, hardening mode is now enabled by default, which means that unless you want to use USB support, you no longer need to be a member of the vboxusers group.
• Chromium has been updated to 39.0.2171.65. enablePepperPDF is now enabled by default. chromium*Wrapper packages no longer exist, because upstream removed NSAPI support. chromium-stable has been renamed to chromium.
• Python packaging documentation is now part of nixpkgs manual. To override the python packages available to a custom python you now use pkgs.pythonFull.buildEnv.override instead of pkgs.pythonFull.override.
• boot.resumeDevice = "8:6" is no longer supported. Most users will want to leave it undefined, which takes the swap partitions automatically. There is an evaluation assertion to ensure that the string starts with a slash.
• The system-wide default timezone for NixOS installations changed from CET to UTC. To choose a different timezone for your system, configure time.timeZone in configuration.nix. A fairly complete list of possible values for that setting is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones.
• GNU screen has been updated to 4.2.1, which breaks the ability to connect to sessions created by older versions of screen.
• The Intel GPU driver was updated to the 3.x prerelease version (used by most distributions) and supports DRI3 now.

What is new in version 14.04:

• Installation on UEFI systems is now supported. See Section 1.2.1, "UEFI Installation" for details.
• Systemd has been updated to version 212, which has numerous improvements. NixOS now automatically starts systemd user instances when you log in. You can define global user units through the systemd.unit.* options.
• NixOS is now based on Glibc 2.19 and GCC 4.8.
• The default Linux kernel has been updated to 3.12.
• KDE has been updated to 4.12.
• Nix has been updated to 1.7.
• NixOS now supports fully declarative management of users and groups. If you set users.mutableUsers to false, then the contents of /etc/passwd and /etc/group will be congruent to your NixOS configuration. For instance, if you remove a user from users.extraUsers and run nixos-rebuild, the user account will cease to exist. Also, imperative commands for managing users and groups, such as useradd, are no longer available. If users.mutableUsers is true (the default), then behaviour is unchanged from NixOS 13.10.
• NixOS now has basic container support, meaning you can easily run a NixOS instance as a container in a NixOS host system. These containers are suitable for testing and experimentation but not production use, since they're not fully isolated from the host. See Chapter 5, Containers for details.
• Systemd units provided by packages can now be overridden from the NixOS configuration. For instance, if a package foo provides systemd units, you can say:
• systemd.packages = [ pkgs.foo ];
• to enable those units. You can then set or override unit options in the usual way, e.g.
• systemd.services.foo.wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
• systemd.services.foo.serviceConfig.MemoryLimit = "512M";
• When upgrading from a previous release, please be aware of the following incompatible changes:
• Nixpkgs no longer exposes unfree packages by default. If your NixOS configuration requires unfree packages from Nixpkgs, you need to enable support for them explicitly by setting:
• nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;
• Otherwise, you get an error message such as:
• error: package ‘nvidia-x11-331.49-3.12.17' in ‘.../nvidia-x11/default.nix:56'
• has an unfree license, refusing to evaluate
• The Adobe Flash player is no longer enabled by default in the Firefox and Chromium wrappers. To enable it, you must set:
• nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;
• nixpkgs.config.firefox.enableAdobeFlash = true; # for Firefox
• nixpkgs.config.chromium.enableAdobeFlash = true; # for Chromium
• The firewall is now enabled by default. If you don't want this, you need to disable it explicitly:
• networking.firewall.enable = false;
• The option boot.loader.grub.memtest86 has been renamed to boot.loader.grub.memtest86.enable.
• The mysql55 service has been merged into the mysql service, which no longer sets a default for the option services.mysql.package.
• Package variants are now differentiated by suffixing the name, rather than the version. For instance, sqlite-3.8.4.3-interactive is now called sqlite-interactive-3.8.4.3. This ensures that nix-env -i sqlite is unambiguous, and that nix-env -u won't "upgrade" sqlite to sqlite-interactive or vice versa. Notably, this change affects the Firefox wrapper (which provides plugins), as it is now called firefox-wrapper. So when using nix-env, you should do nix-env -e firefox; nix-env -i firefox-wrapper if you want to keep using the wrapper. This change does not affect declarative package management, since attribute names like pkgs.firefoxWrapper were already unambiguous.
• The symlink /etc/ca-bundle.crt is gone. Programs should instead use the environment variable OPENSSL_X509_CERT_FILE (which points to /etc/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt).