<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 &lt;(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>
