If you are using Linux or Mac OS X, the easiest way to install Nix is to run the following command: $ bash <(curl https://nixos.org/nix/install) This will perform a single-user installation of Nix, meaning that /nix is owned by the invoking user. You should run this under your usual user account, not as root. The script will invoke sudo to create /nix if it doesn’t already exist. If you don’t have sudo, you should manually create /nix first as root, e.g.: $ mkdir /nix $ chown alice /nix You can uninstall Nix simply by running: $ rm -rf /nix