Understanding Hydra and the Nix Release Process

With NixOS 25.05 around the corner, we sit down with a release manager to unpack what's new, what's changing, and what's finally getting easier. Spoiler: it's not just the tooling.

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Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• LINUX Unplugged TUI Challenge Rules — Help shape the challenge - what did we miss?
• TUI Challenge Rules Discussion Thread
• The Launch 🚀 21: Bigfoot As a Service — We rescued Brent's van that should've stayed retired, dodged cops and fuel leaks, and learned why outsourcing navigation to ChatGPT was a terrible idea.
• Tristan Ross
• Release Managers - NixOS Release Wiki
• NixOS 25.05 – Release schedule
• release-notes/rl-2505.section.md
• Nixos-rebuild-ng: a nixos-rebuild rewrite
• marytts/marytts: MARY TTS -- an open-source, multilingual text-to-speech synthesis system written in pure java — This is the source code repository for the multilingual open-source MARY text-to-speech platform (MaryTTS). MaryTTS is a client-server system written in pure Java, so it runs on many platforms.
• PostgREST — A standalone web server that turns your PostgreSQL database directly into a RESTful API. Available as services.postgrest.
• asciimoo/omnom: A webpage bookmarking and snapshotting service — Access & share previously visited pages without worrying about modifications or availability.
• uMurmur by umurmur — uMurmur is a minimalistic Mumble server primarily targeted to run on embedded computers, like routers, with an open OS like e.g. OpenWRT.
• Actual Budget — a local-first personal finance app.
• gokapi — Lightweight selfhosted Firefox Send alternative without public upload. AWS S3 supported
• Cursor — a vscode-based editor that uses AI to help you write code faster.
• Pinchflat — a selfhosted YouTube media manager used to track channels and download videos on release.
• Traccar — a modern GPS Tracking Platform.
• crab-hole — a cross platform Pi-hole clone written in Rust using hickory-dns/trust-dns.
• nostr-rs-relay — a nostr relay, written in Rust.
• haven — a high availability vault for events on nostr.
• immich-public-proxy — a proxy for sharing Immich albums without exposing the Immich API.
• strfry — a relay for the nostr protocol.
• TSDProxy — Very simple proxy for virtual services in Tailscale
• Pick: Switcheroo — Convert between different image filetypes and resize them easily.
• Switcheroo on Flathub
• Switcheroo is packaged in nixpkgs
• Pick: mazanoke — MAZANOKE is a simple image optimizer that runs in your browser, works offline, and keeps your images private without ever leaving your device.
• jolheiser/mazanoke-nix: Nix derivation/flake for mazanoke