Flox convenience installer - installation best practices #409
Description
Background
The first impression is important and usually leaves a lasting impression. That's why I think having a more convenient, robust and easy way to install Flox is important for all supported distros. For MacOS as an example, it requires 3 steps and repeat steps when wanting to upgrade. Ubuntu and RPM distros needs about the same steps, but do make it more convenient to update Flox versions natively.
What problem does this feature solve?
A solution would be a convenience bash script. Flox is an opinionated Nix implementation for abstracting away complexities.
Would abstracting away the multi-step installation process improve adoption? Especially for influencers or teachers trying to teach Linux/DevOps/Software development. Helping convince users that Flox is the way to go by supplying a polished one-liner installer.
Feature behavior
- Run
curl -fsSL https://get.flox.dev | bash-> done flox --version
Auto-detects platform (macOS arm64/x64, Linux x86_64/aarch64, WSL?)
Prefers native package managers when possible (Homebrew, apt, dnf/yum)
Cleans up temp files, handles sudo gracefully, retries downloads.
Install Homebrew if it's missing on macOS. Opinionated brew.sh install (uv and poetry do this for a reason)
Suggested implementation / alternatives
Suggested bash convenience script implementation:
https://github.com/noor-latif/get-flox