{"slug": "colmena", "name": "colmena", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 2, "commenters": 4, "warners": 0, "score": 2.417, "rising": 2.0, "first": "2025-11-30", "latest": "2026-09-25", "why": "I use colmena and deploy-rs on different projects because they have some nice features", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 2, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I use colmena and deploy-rs on different projects because they have some nice features", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["colmena", "Colmena"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 797611416, "item_id": 49850713, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49850713", "by": "Sugimot0", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "colmena or nixops4 for interconnected nodes", "excerpt": "I used to wonder this same question and weighed guix and nix quite a bit before moving to the nix camp. Guix on paper really sounds ideal, it feels like a more compelling design, more first principles, it's all scheme, really exciting ideas under the hood. But design intent is not a substitute for the actual user experience. IRL it's too much hassle: weak package coverage, weak ecosystem, a steep learning curve, most", "context": "", "use_case": "multi-node deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS"}, {"id": 797611336, "item_id": 49850708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49850708", "by": "Sugimot0", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "colmena or nixops4 for interconnected nodes", "excerpt": "I used to wonder this same question and weighed guix and nix quite a bit before moving to the nix camp. Guix on paper really sounds ideal, it feels like a more compelling design, more first principles, it's all scheme, really exciting ideas under the hood. But design intent is not a substitute for the actual user experience. IRL it's too much hassle: weak package coverage, weak ecosystem, a steep learning curve, most", "context": "", "use_case": "multi-node deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS"}, {"id": 786383936, "item_id": 49148996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49148996", "by": "dhon_", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use colmena and deploy-rs on different projects because they have some nice features", "excerpt": "You can also push deployments to remote systems which is great for servers and headless devices like raspberry pis. I use colmena and deploy-rs on different projects because they have some nice features but you can also do it with bare nix. I have a repo for kiosk appliances that can build an SD card image for a specific device in a fleet (so no on device configuration is required) but it can also push out updates or", "context": "", "use_case": "deploying NixOS to remote systems", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: NixOS-DGX-Spark \u2013 Nix and NixOS on the DGX Spark"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["multi-node deployment", "deploying nixos to remote systems", "nixos remote deployment", "deploying nixos servers"], "compared": [{"slug": "nixos", "name": "NixOS", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "deploy-rs", "name": "deploy-rs", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "sops-nix", "name": "sops-nix", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "nixos-anywhere", "name": "nixos-anywhere", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "disko", "name": "disko", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "gnu-guix", "name": "GNU Guix", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "restic", "name": "restic", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49841563", "title": "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49146267", "title": "Show HN: NixOS-DGX-Spark \u2013 Nix and NixOS on the DGX Spark", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46835612", "title": "Guix System First Impressions as a Nix User", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46099022", "title": "NixOS 25.11 released", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 797611416, "item_id": 49850713, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49850713", "by": "Sugimot0", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "colmena or nixops4 for interconnected nodes", "excerpt": "I used to wonder this same question and weighed guix and nix quite a bit before moving to the nix camp. Guix on paper really sounds ideal, it feels like a more compelling design, more first principles, it's all scheme, really exciting ideas under the hood. But design intent is not a substitute for the actual user experience. IRL it's too much hassle: weak package coverage, weak ecosystem, a steep learning curve, most", "context": "", "use_case": "multi-node deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS"}, {"id": 797611336, "item_id": 49850708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49850708", "by": "Sugimot0", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "colmena or nixops4 for interconnected nodes", "excerpt": "I used to wonder this same question and weighed guix and nix quite a bit before moving to the nix camp. Guix on paper really sounds ideal, it feels like a more compelling design, more first principles, it's all scheme, really exciting ideas under the hood. But design intent is not a substitute for the actual user experience. IRL it's too much hassle: weak package coverage, weak ecosystem, a steep learning curve, most", "context": "", "use_case": "multi-node deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS"}, {"id": 786383936, "item_id": 49148996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49148996", "by": "dhon_", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use colmena and deploy-rs on different projects because they have some nice features", "excerpt": "You can also push deployments to remote systems which is great for servers and headless devices like raspberry pis. I use colmena and deploy-rs on different projects because they have some nice features but you can also do it with bare nix. I have a repo for kiosk appliances that can build an SD card image for a specific device in a fleet (so no on device configuration is required) but it can also push out updates or", "context": "", "use_case": "deploying NixOS to remote systems", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: NixOS-DGX-Spark \u2013 Nix and NixOS on the DGX Spark"}, {"id": 749465028, "item_id": 46841564, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46841564", "by": "c0balt", "date": "2026-01-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "deploy-rs or colemna is fine", "excerpt": "I would strongly recommend sops-nix[0]. Pair this with ssh-to-age/ssh-to-gpg for the keys for each server. We are using this at $work for multiple servers, one notable advantages is that it works in teams (for multiple people) and git (and also gitops). For remote installations nixos-anywhere is great. deploy-rs or colemna is fine, nixos-rebuild with `--target-host` is also working well for us however. [0]: https://g", "context": "", "use_case": "NixOS remote deployment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Guix System First Impressions as a Nix User"}, {"id": 737640659, "item_id": 46102541, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46102541", "by": "Ingon", "date": "2025-11-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "on my infrastructure/servers (NixOS deploying with colmena)", "excerpt": "I am excited for having a new version of NixOS. Few days ago I realized that November is almost gone and went looking for when I can expect the new release. And right on schedule it popped out (was checking throughout the day). Big props to the release managers (and of course the maintainers) I use nix via flakes on my own machines (via NixOS), in my projects (with direnv), on my infrastructure/servers (NixOS deployi", "context": "", "use_case": "deploying NixOS servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "NixOS 25.11 released"}]}