Announcing the flox Open Beta

Harness the power of Nix. Today we’re thrilled to release the flox CLI beta to the public as an open source project and announce a Series A funding round led by NEA.

Today we’re thrilled to release the flox CLI beta to the public as an open source project and announce a Series A funding round led by NEA.

Building the Ladder

At NixCon 2022, flox Lead Engineer Tom Bereknyei (@tomberek) presented the mission behind flox.  It was an important moment for us to share with the Nix community what we see as the problems we can solve,  and how we intend to go about solving them.

At NixCon 2022, flox Lead Engineer Tom Bereknyei (@tomberek) presented the mission behind flox.

Building the Ladder: flox at NixCon

Hash Collision

on TAR, NAR, and how Nix got something right. Github changed the format of their archives and this  unexpectedly caused some systems and services that depend on the hash of the archives of a source tree to break.  Nix uses NAR hashes, a custom format for source archives; NAR hashes are deterministic based on the content of a source tree.

Github changed the format of their archives and this caused some systems and services that depend on the hash of the archives of a source tree to break. 

NixCon 2022

Last week, the Nix community got together in person for the first time in 3 years, in Paris, for three days of presentations, discussion, and good times.

Thank you NixCon!

Migrating from asdf to flox

Leveling up your version manager. asdf is a popular version manager, helping developers manage the  languages and versions required for a specific project. But there are a few drawbacks to asdf. We can deliver on the asdf  model and take it a few steps further with flox.

Teams love asdf because it helps make juggling different language versions transparent and simple.

Think outside the box. People often say they don't use Nix because it solves the same problems that containerization does. This is a half truth. Nix specializes in packaging software, while containerization excels at deploying software. They're best when used together.

Nix, flox, and docker containers are best when used together.

Nix and Docker containers: why not both?

Nix and Containers: why not both?

Anybody can view it, fork it, patch it, and use Nix to inspect the largest set of free  software recipes in the world. People sometimes focus on Nix the language or Nix the package manager,  but it's the Nixpkgs package collection that is core to the success of Nix.

The world we know today depends in fundamental ways on open source software.

Nixpkgs: the big recipe book of open source

Both Homebrew and flox are package managers, but their approach to package management is very different.  Homebrew is a package manager primarily designed for MacOS. flox is built on Nix, a more advanced package manager designed for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems,  including MacOS. Let's explore how you would migrate from Homebrew to flox.

Both Homebrew and flox are package managers, but their approach to package management is very different.

Homebrew vs flox

flox, Nix for Simplicity & Scale

flox is a first-of-its-kind environment manager. Seamlessly create new polyglot developer environments. Make everything reproducible from package management to builds.

flox is a first-of-its-kind environment manager. Seamlessly create new polyglot developer environments. Make everything reproducible from packages to builds.

Announcing flox

Nix: Pure Genius

I absolutely love it when hard problems are solved by challenging convention, peeling back layer after layer until pinpointing the core assumption that led us down the wrong path in the first place.

I love when hard problems are solved by challenging convention.

Happy New Year!

tired: year of the Linux desktop. wired: year of Nix everywhere.  2022 was a pivotal year for flox. We are delighted with the response towards the  platform and CLI, and very grateful for the many fascinating conversations we had with users.

Happy New Year! We hope you're as excited for 2023 as we are!