❄️ Installing the nix package manager on SailfishOS

Thanks for the guidance, I feel more confident to try it now.

I will post a tutorial how to setup ProtonMail Bridge on sailfishos.wiki if you are interested

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I’m not sure what caused the problem. I first thought it was the systemd-service I created to mount /nix when booting up (because I reboot my device every day). But after I removed it, the problem appeared again. I discovered that it basically gets to the unlock prompt and after you type in the code it doesn’t do anything. It does this two or three times if you reboot and then it boots again normally. I have now removed nix and it hasn’t done this since then. So I assume that nix was somehow the problem? But I really can’t think of anything that nix could do to cause this

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That would be perfect, thank you in advance! I have no idea how many ProtonMail users there is out here, but the support for it has been missing from SFOS for too long time.

Alternative option for what?? I’m already a ProtonMail Plus subscriber and I already use Bridge on my Laptop and now on my phone

Fine and it is also fine that you share your know-how with a wiki tutorial. Just remember that it such a service require a monthly subscription (or year or multi-years subscription). Nothing bad about that and I like Proton services. However, it always important to consider a open-source alternative.

Why? For the same reason (vendor lock-in) you are struggling with SFOS, for example… :wink:

As far as I can tell, Proton’s services are open source in most parts:

With E-Mails, you basically always have “vendor lock-in” except if you host your own E-Mail-Server, which many of us don’t have the resources or the knowledge for.

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Here is the tutorial I promised: Using ProtonMail Bridg... | SailfishOS community wiki

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Oh did we? Then I’m sorry, I misunderstood your point.

You are right, you can absolutely host your own E-Mail server at a hosting provider. What I meant was really hosting it by yourself (e. g. on an old computer in your basement,…)

Thanks for sharing this @NIS, great that you got it working and a really nice write-up.

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Thank you for the instructions! I use my Gemini PDA to be able to leave the work laptop at home on leisure trips, the nix package manager gives a lot more tools for me on the go. For example I was now able to install MySQL and connect to remote databases while I am on a trip just with the Gemini PDA.

The instructions didn’t yet have a way to automatically mount the .nix-store-image under /nix after reboot, but adding following line to the /etc/fstab was enough for auto mount:

/home/defaultuser/.nix-store-image /nix ext4 defaults 0 0

For some reason the installer did not generate .profile file, so any of the nix-* tools were not usable even after terminal reboot. After manually sourcing the configuration shell script everything worked as it should:

source .nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh

To keep that persistent even after terminal boot, I created /home/defaultuser/.profile with the same line.

Thank you again for making the Gemini PDA even more powerful little pocket computer on the go for me :slight_smile:

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