If you download a binary you can just steam-run it and it just works
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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This command will just run an executable file on nix. Normally only executables which are installed from the package manager will work.
appimage-run is another option. Which can be used to run, you guessed it, appimages
But appimages will complain about unmet dependencies, so usually they don't work
I haven't had any issues thus far. But I have not used a lot of appimages. Usually I can find everything in nixpkgs, and those that I didn't all worked with appimages.
I have not used Nix, so I may not know what I am talking about.
That said, I have been using Chimera Linux which uses the APK package manager. It works by maintaining a single file in /etc/apk/world that specifies all the packages the user wants on the system. This is used to calculate dependencies and install packages. When you “add” and “del” packages, all it is really doing is adding and removing from this list. If you remove a package, it will remove all the dependencies too unless they appear in the “world” file.
If you do not specify a version number for a package, you get the latest. But you can pin versions of you want.
If you copy the world file from one system to another, you get the same set of installed packages.
So, if I use git to backup my world file, maybe a couple of other entries in /etc, and the dot files in my home directory, I have pretty much everything I need to completely recreate my system.
Is it really worth all the extra complexity of Nix?
For rollbacks, I've been using Timeshift in Mint, and it has worked brilliantly.