[Nix-dev] Malicious installation methods

[Michiel Leenaars]

Hi all,

>> Is the nix root dir configurable? Would it be that horrible
>> to have /opt/nix or /var/lib/nix or something else be the nix
>> root on Debian?

> It's not strictly required, but it would mean losing out
> on all the binary packages provided by the CI.

although it would mean a Big Change, it would (to me personally) make
sense to change the *default* to /opt/nix - so that it becomes palatable
to all (that is what /opt is for) and everyone can continue to use the
binary packages. /nix is shorter, but that is the only real benefit.
And given that Nix generates new paths anyway for everything all the
time, the transition seems doable. How do others feel about that?

Regarding the installer: it would be cool to have something like 
http://appimage.org, http://orbital-apps.com, http://flatpak.org or
http://snapcraft.io instead of a shell script. That would have a SHA
that could be verified, etc.

On other news: I've just installed Nix on my Jolla Tablet (I was one
of the lucky folks who finally got one) with the shell script
(downloaded, not piped), and was amazed to find that doing so actually
worked amazingly well - in fact as trivial as on any regular system
I've installed nix on. I only had to become root ('devel-su') and
'mkdir /nix && chmod -R nemo /nix', run the script and the rest just
happened automatically.

After installing XWayland (through nix) and "export DISPLAY=:0.0" I'm
able to run complex apps like Firefox and Blink. The only caveat so
far: I don't yet have input devices working. Any hints much appreciated.

Very excited to be able to add all kinds of cool stuff to my Jolla
Tablet from the comfort of nix-env...

Best,
Michiel