10 unoffical NixOS packages worth checking out

NixOS already offers a lot of standard Linux packages in their stable repository. Some packages doesn’t get merged or haven’t been submitted yet, but I don’t want to miss them after switching from ArchLinux to NixOS.

So I started to create my own selfhosted NUR repository which is equivalent to the ArchLinux User Repository (AUR). After setting up NUR in your system configuration, you could easily reference my new packages and give them a try!

1. OnlyOffice

Onlyoffice is a great comprehensive and modern office suite which is available for various platforms and open-source. Normally I use it as a web application integrated into Nextcloud, but there are desktop versions available too.

nur.repos.onny.onlyoffice-desktopeditors

I took the package from the user Lexuge who posted a snippet on NixOS Discourse and updated it to the latest version.

2. SMLoadr

SMLoadr is an interesting project to download music from Deezer. Since downloading from there with just a free account is definitely against their license agreement, you shouldn’t use this software since your account could get banned.

nur.repos.onny.smloadr

3. Popcorntime

Popcorntime is a very old but good P2P video streaming client. The project changed ownership over the time because of DMCA takedowns. It is not clear who is currently running it and therefore it is considered less trustworthy. Nevertheless it is a impressive piece of software regarding the technology aspects. Please note that depending on what content you’re going to stream with Popcorntime, it could be illegal in your jurisdiction.

nur.repos.onny.popcorntime

I’ve got the original packaging script from timjrd’s Github repository. He notes that the package includes some dirty hacks to get Nwjs working on NixOS and probably some functions don’t work yet.

4. OpenSnitch

OpenSnitch by gustavo-iniguez-goya is an acitvely maintained fork of the original software by evilsocket. It provides a Linux application firewall which manages internet connections of all userspace applications.

nur.repos.onny.opensnitch

I took the original pull-request by timor and updated the program files. I havent used and tested the program yet on NixOS.

5. Foliate

Foliate is a modern GTK ebook reader application with responsive layout and many nice features such as library mode, dictionary, text-to-speech, etc.

nur.repos.onny.foliate

I used the packaging scripts from this discontinued pull request on Nixpkgs created by dtzWill. The package still has some issues and reading ebooks doesn’t work yet. Hopefully someone or I could figure out a fix in the future.

6. Passwordsafe

I prefer Passwordsafe as an alternative to Keepassxc since the interface is much more clean and easier to use. The password manager is also ready for mobile platforms with its responsive design thanks to libhandy.

nur.repos.onny.passwordsafe

There is already a pull request upstream for this package created by mvnetbiz. I used his/her sources for my repository. Passwordsafe is already working quite well for me without any bugs or issues.

7. Fragments

Instead of using oldschool torrent clients such as Transmission, you could use the GTK app Fragments. It might be not very suitable for heavy torrent users, but it is quite nice if you want to downlaod and share some files.

nur.repos.onny.fragments

The user Wordofpeace submitted an inital pull-request upstream which is now discontinued. There is already a newer version of Fragments available and it now has new dependencies which needs to be packaged. Unfortunately at this stage the program is not yet usable :(

8. Ocenaudio

Ocenaudio is a simple audio editor with an appealing interface. Unfortunately this software is not opensource but you can use it without any limitations.

nur.repos.onny.ocenaudio

I tried to package the binary version which needed some extra patching. Creating the package is working fine but the program is crashing currently.

9. Hyperpotamus

Hyperpotamus is a really nice engine to automate web requests. It is a relatively unknown project to this date.

nur.repos.onny.hyperpotamus

10. LibreWolf

This is a really great fork of the Firefox web browser. It is not yet available for all platforms but the Linux version is really close to upstream Firefox, including the latest security fixes. The fork is free of advertisement and telemetry. It has Duckduckgo as the default search engine and includes uBlock Origin as an ad-blocker.

nur.repos.onny.librewolf-bin

The package uses the binary version released as a Flatpak. Limitations are no video and microphone support and missing WebGL runtime.

Next steps …

I already learned a lot about packaging on NixOS. So now it’s time to get all these package upstream ;)

Update Oct 2020:

• The package Ocenaudio was accepted upstream!
• This post got featured in NixOS Weekly Newsletter Oct 2020 (Archive 1, 2)
• Gnome-Passwordsafe got merged upstream too :D