NixOS 21.11 Released But Its Own Package Manager Is Left Behind Due To Regressions

NixOS is an original Linux distribution built atop its own unique Nix package manager that is focused on being functional, reliable, and reproducible. The Nix package manager concept is great but somewhat ironic is the new NixOS 21.11 release not even shipping with the latest Nix package manager version due to known regressions.

NixOS 21.11 released yesterday and rather than shipping with the latest-and-greatest Nix, it's being held back to the latest Nix 2.3 point release by default rather than Nix 2.4. Holding up the default version of Nix was done as "Nix has not been updated to version 2.4 due to regressions in non-experimental behavior."

Nix 2.4 focused on delivering improved error messages, various command improvements, new built-in functions, support for x86_64 micro-architecture feature levels, and a variety of other improvements. Nix remains a novel and very interesting package management solution.

On the operating system side, NixOS 21.11 has switched from iptables to using nf_tables, its KDE Plasma packaging now fully works on Wayland, better support for LXD, and a variety of new services are now available. There is also many updated packages including the likes of PHP 8.0, Python 3.9, PostgreSQL 13, Spark 3, Bash 5.0, GNOME 41, systemd 249, and many more.

Downloads and more details on NixOS 21.11 can be found via NixOS.org.