Add "who builds Nix and NixOS?" to FAQ

[maltfield]

Observations

It's not clear to newcomers that "NixOS" is both an OS and an organization, and that "NixOS" also manages "Nix".

I'm new to Nix, and I found it very confusing. I skimmed through the docs, but it only left me more confused when the "How to get help" section in the nix.dev documentation linked me to the NixOS forums.

• https://discourse.nixos.org/t/what-is-the-relationship-between-nix-and-nixos/57828

Problem

I think the "normal" assumption for newcomers is that nix was created and then some other project was created (by other people) that included nix as their package manager in a new distro called NixOS.

I think it's very confusing why the FAQ tells users to go to the NixOS forums to ask questions about nix.

The FAQ doesn't indicate the relationship between nix, NixOS, or all the other nix-related software projects in this ecosystem.

Approaches

I think we should add questions to the FAQ that address this. For example:

1. What is the relationship between nix and NixOS?
2. What other projects are managed by NixOS?
3. What other, similar projects that are not managed by NixOS?

To make this clear, I think any TLD domains that are paid for by NixOS should be clearly enumerated, so new users know what's official and what's not.

Willing to help?

Yes. If a PR is welcome, let me know and I'll submit one.

Priorities

Add 👍 to issues you find important.

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/what-is-the-relationship-between-nix-and-nixos/57828/6

[fricklerhandwerk]

@maltfield thanks for the keen observation and raising the issue.

What is the relationship between nix and NixOS?

This is an important question and I'd appreciate a lot if you opened a PR so we'd at least have a basis for discussion and clarification. Getting a take from your perspective would make for an answer beginners care about. As a community we have a big expert blind spot, which often makes it hard being informative without putting in extra effort (and the time required for that is always very limited).

What other projects are managed by NixOS?

This is a bit of a wrong question, because NixOS is only the Linux distribution, and the NixOS Foundation doesn't really manage anything. While the community does have formal governance structures now, IMO they're not developed enough for "managing" to be even remotely the right term for what's happening.

We do have a term "official" though, and that while it's also not fully defined, there seems to be no disagreement that it's supposed to mean "it's under one of the DNS domains and GitHub orgs owned by the NixOS Foundation".

What other, similar projects that are not managed by NixOS?

For both "related official/unofficial" projects, we do have the awesome list, which I'd avoid duplicating in terms of curation effort. But it's definitely worth pointing out and linking to the NixOS GitHub org, as well as the nix-community GitHub org.

Note to @NixOS/marketing-team: At least the org-level documentation overlaps with what probably should live in nixos.org to be discovered early in the process of learning about Nix/NixOS. For now I think it's not wrong answering this here in the FAQ since there should be a natural place for finding such answers later on.

To make this clear, I think any TLD domains that are paid for by NixOS should be clearly enumerated, so new users know what's official and what's not.

Yes, there's even general agreement we should have everything under one domain, but apparently no one found the combination of available time, authority, and permissions to make that happen, yet. It doesn't help on the discoverability front that many highly useful services are maintained by volunteers under their own domains; it's great though because it works at all.