4/25/2025 at 3:32:29 PM
sugared up nix pkgs for money.did i get that right?
by cdaringe
4/25/2025 at 10:21:41 PM
Not really :) (disclosure: I work there)1. "sugared up nix pkgs" -> Nixpkgs is a package repository, and also not the product here. We provide a tool for setting up and using reproducible developer environments via a familiar, approachable CLI. You can install things from nixpkgs, and the experience is "sugared up" in the sense that in my opinion it's more palatable to most people than using Nix itself. I've used Nix for years, and I use NixOS and nix-darwin to configure my machines, but there's too much friction for me to want to use it for development all the time.
2. "for money" -> everything you see in the product today is free and will remain free. We're developing enterprise features that won't be free. That said, I use Flox today for all of my local development on side projects and it does quite literally everything I need.
The bigger picture is that we use Nix under the hood as a layer of primitives/infrastructure but make different choices about how to put them together and deliver features that Nix doesn't have out of the box like services (or something similar to docker-compose), the ability to use more than just Bash, etc. The goal is to allow more people to bring Nix to work: https://flox.dev/blog/its-time-to-bring-nix-to-work/
Happy to answer other questions
by z_mitchell