Unsloth Desktop packaged for Nixpkgs
Hi Unsloth team!
Wanted to let you know that Unsloth Desktop is now packaged for Nixpkgs, the repository behind nix-based distributions. That means Desktop is now available to NixOS and Nix users through the standard channels.
Quick links:
- Initial packaging: NixOS/nixpkgs#559716 wraps the official Ubuntu
.debin a managed FHS-style environment, registers the desktop entry, and wires up the app's runtime installer path. - Follow-up PR (merged today): NixOS/nixpkgs#560589 adds an
updateScript(so future release bumps are tracked automatically), updates to 0.1.808-beta, and fixes two dependency gaps found during testing.
Two of those may also be relevant to you for other environments where Desktop is launched outside a full desktop session (compositors, manual launches, container-like setups):
glib-networking: the webview used by the Tauri shell can end up with no TLS backend whenGIO_EXTRA_MODULESis not set, since GIO's TLS modules live outside glib's default module search path. The symptom was the Model Hub showing offline and the GGUF picker returning a 404 while the webview's fetches failed silently. ExportingGIO_EXTRA_MODULESresolved it; a user independently hit and diagnosed the same issue.pciutils: the runtime installer's AMD GPU detection path shells out tolspci; on systems without it, AMD hosts silently fall back to CPU-only torch.
Also, a personal datapoint if useful: I'm your stereotypical GPU-poor user, testing Desktop on a 6-year-old GTX 1060 6GB (Pascal). Smaller GGUF loads through the app work fine so far. If there is any guidance or documentation for people without Ampere/Hopper-class cards, I'd happily read it and contribute feedback on what works at this tier.
Big thanks for the open tooling. Happy to help out with anything Nix-related on your side, including adding a note for Nix users to your README if you'd like .
Source: unslothai/unsloth