NixCon 2025: Nix professionalizes itself
The European annual conference on the ecosystem surrounding the Nix package manager demonstrated the growing maturity and commercial influence of the system.
(Image: Charles Bergman/Shutterstock.com)
Over 400 participants gathered in Switzerland from September 5 to 7 for NixCon 2025. The ninth annual European conference on the package manager Nix and the operating system NixOS took place on the beautiful campus of the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil-Jona. It offered visitors 71 presentations, 5 interactive workshops, and numerous spontaneous discussion rounds.
Prior to the event, the choice of location had been criticized due to the limited local hotel capacities and the generally high prices in Switzerland. The host NixOS Foundation mitigated these concerns by providing free tickets for students and covering the cost of meals from sponsorship funds.
The fact that such funds were available was a novelty at this year's NixCon. In contrast to the North American conference "Planet Nix", which is not officially organized by the NixOS Foundation, NixCon 2025 officially solicited sponsors for the first time and offered them exhibition space at the conference. This was a significant change compared to NixCon 2024 in Berlin, which took place without any commercial partners. The presence of sponsors underlined the impression that Nix is increasingly establishing itself as an industry-ready technology. In addition to well-known names such as Google or Jane Street, many of the sponsors are themselves active in the field of Nix consulting, training or with NixOS-based products. Despite the stronger commercial character, the hobby enthusiasm that is widespread in Nix remained clearly noticeable, not least thanks to many volunteers.
Main topics of the conference
In terms of content, NixCon 2025 also focused a lot on the professional use of the Nix ecosystem. The topics ranged from the skilful development of Nix infrastructure in companies – with its typical challenges such as supply chain security or meeting legal requirements (compliance). They also covered highly specialized applications such as global scaling solutions or Nix on satellites and micro systems.
What the core components of Nix/NixOS actually are and how best to develop them further was also a frequent topic at the conference. These included efforts to simplify the decentralized further development of Nix forks by standardizing the Nixpkgs package collection, and the discussion of which projects in the Nix environment (including the Foundation's own infrastructure, which is becoming increasingly expensive) the Foundation should support financially and with personnel. What should be excluded from this circle in order to strengthen the focus.
Many of the sponsored talks, on the other hand, were about making Nix more attractive to the commercial mainstream. It was about simpler workflows, better team collaboration, faster builds and professional support. New use cases for NixOS were also demonstrated, for example in embedded systems with functions such as over-the-air updates. Currently, this is often still implemented with established technologies such as Zephyr, but the enormous speed with which Nix is catching up here was clearly noticeable for long-time NixCon attendees.
Open discussion panels with the Steering Committee and the Foundation Board demonstrated transparency initiatives. In the past, there had been criticism of inadequate communication, among other things. However, these efforts were somewhat overshadowed by a controversial incident during the preparations for NixCon 2025: a sponsor was rejected, apparently because it listed Palantir among its customers on its website. The decision led to various discussions and provided critics with new ammunition.
Conclusion
Overall, NixCon 2025 impressively demonstrated the progress and potential of Nix and NixOS. The conference showed how an open source technology originally supported by enthusiasts can make the leap into the commercial sector without losing its roots and community spirit. This was particularly evident in the large number of hard-working volunteers on site. Recordings of the livestream are available on YouTube and are currently being edited for individual delivery.
Note: The author works for Applicative Systems GmbH, which owns the Nixcademy brand and is one of the sponsors of this year's NixCon.
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