¶ Welcome to the Aux Wiki!
This is the home of the official documentation for Auxolotl.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for how we can improve docs, please contact the Documentation Special Interest Group on Discourse.
¶ What is Auxolotl?
Auxolotl is a community-driven fork of Nix, a package manager and Linux distro (distribution) designed around declarative, reproducible builds. Unlike other distros, Nix lets you define your entire system’s configuration in plain text files, making it easy to modify, rebuild, and share system configurations.
¶ How do I get started with Auxolotl?
Check out our templates repository for example templates you can use to bootstrap your system.
¶ How is Auxolotl different from Nix/NixOS?
Auxolotl has a simple community governance model different from the complex governance model of the Nix ecosystem.
Auxolotl may make technical improvements to Nix and NixOS in the future.
Currently, Auxolotl and Nix are intercompatible: i.e., you can install Nix packages in Auxolotl, and vice versa. You can easily switch between them in either direction at any time. Auxolotl’s compatibility with Nix may change as development continues. Auxolotl is also fully compatible with Lix, a modern, community-focused replacement for the Nix evaluator.
¶ Who is Auxolotl for?
The short answer is: Auxolotl is for everyone.
Auxolotl is for users who like having declarable, reproducible systems. With Auxolotl, your entire system configuration is defined in plaintext files, which you can easily edit, copy, and share. This makes for systems that are easier to customize and harder to break than traditional distros. However, this does mean Auxolotl has a learning curve: Auxolotl uses a language with a unique syntax, package management is different than in most distros, and most system configuration is done using options. To lower this barrier to entry, Auxolotl comes with templates to help you quickly get started and bootstrap your first system.
You don’t need to be a software developer or experienced system administrator to use Auxolotl, but we recommend that you have some experience using command-line tools, text editors like Vim and Nano, and at least a basic understanding of the Linux ecosystem.
¶ Why was Auxolotl created?
Auxolotl was created as a proactive friendly fork of the Nix ecosystem in order to make sure that there is a community-focused version of the Nix dream, and also to provide a living experiment in governance and (eventually) technical augmentations to Nix and NixOS.
¶ Who’s behind Auxolotl?
Auxolotl is a community-driven distribution originally forked from Nix by Jake Hamilton. The team is organized into distinct Special Interest Groups (SIGs) covering separate parts of Auxolotl, such as package maintainers, documentation maintainers, community moderators, etc. If you’d like to contact or join the team, you can do so on the Auxolotl community forums.