<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" version="5.0" xml:id="ch-installing-binary"> <title>Installing a Binary Distribution</title> <para>If you are using Linux or macOS, the easiest way to install Nix is to run the following command: <screen> $ bash <(curl https://nixos.org/nix/install) </screen> This will perform a single-user installation of Nix, meaning that <filename>/nix</filename> is owned by the invoking user. You should run this under your usual user account, <emphasis>not</emphasis> as root. The script will invoke <command>sudo</command> to create <filename>/nix</filename> if it doesn’t already exist. If you don’t have <command>sudo</command>, you should manually create <command>/nix</command> first as root, e.g.: <screen> $ mkdir /nix $ chown alice /nix </screen> The install script will modify the first writable file from amongst <filename>.bash_profile</filename>, <filename>.bash_login</filename> and <filename>.profile</filename> to source <filename>~/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh</filename>. You can set the <command>NIX_INSTALLER_NO_MODIFY_PROFILE</command> environment variable before executing the install script to disable this behaviour. </para> <!-- <para>You can also manually download and install a binary package. Binary packages of the latest stable release are available for Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, macOS and various other systems from the <link xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nix/download.html">Nix homepage</link>. You can also get builds of the latest development release from our <link xlink:href="http://hydra.nixos.org/job/nix/master/release/latest-finished#tabs-constituents">continuous build system</link>.</para> <para>For Fedora, RPM packages are available. These can be installed or upgraded using <command>rpm -U</command>. For example, <screen> $ rpm -U nix-1.8-1.i386.rpm</screen> </para> <para>For Debian and Ubuntu, you can download a Deb package and install it like this: <screen> $ dpkg -i nix_1.8-1_amd64.deb</screen> </para> --> <para>You can also download a binary tarball that contains Nix and all its dependencies. (This is what the install script at <uri>https://nixos.org/nix/install</uri> does automatically.) You should unpack it somewhere (e.g. in <filename>/tmp</filename>), and then run the script named <command>install</command> inside the binary tarball: <screen> alice$ cd /tmp alice$ tar xfj nix-1.8-x86_64-darwin.tar.bz2 alice$ cd nix-1.8-x86_64-darwin alice$ ./install </screen> </para> <para>You can uninstall Nix simply by running: <screen> $ rm -rf /nix </screen> </para> </chapter>