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diff --git a/doc/manual/introduction/about-nix.xml b/doc/manual/introduction/about-nix.xml
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+<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-about-nix">
+
+<title>About Nix</title>
+
+<para>Nix is a <emphasis>purely functional package manager</emphasis>.
+This means that it treats packages like values in purely functional
+programming languages such as Haskell — they are built by functions
+that don’t have side-effects, and they never change after they have
+been built.  Nix stores packages in the <emphasis>Nix
+store</emphasis>, usually the directory
+<filename>/nix/store</filename>, where each package has its own unique
+subdirectory such as
+
+<programlisting>
+/nix/store/b6gvzjyb2pg0kjfwrjmg1vfhh54ad73z-firefox-33.1/
+</programlisting>
+
+where <literal>b6gvzjyb2pg0…</literal> is a unique identifier for the
+package that captures all its dependencies (it’s a cryptographic hash
+of the package’s build dependency graph).  This enables many powerful
+features.</para>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Multiple versions</title>
+
+<para>You can have multiple versions or variants of a package
+installed at the same time.  This is especially important when
+different applications have dependencies on different versions of the
+same package — it prevents the “DLL hell”.  Because of the hashing
+scheme, different versions of a package end up in different paths in
+the Nix store, so they don’t interfere with each other.</para>
+
+<para>An important consequence is that operations like upgrading or
+uninstalling an application cannot break other applications, since
+these operations never “destructively” update or delete files that are
+used by other packages.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Complete dependencies</title>
+
+<para>Nix helps you make sure that package dependency specifications
+are complete.  In general, when you’re making a package for a package
+management system like RPM, you have to specify for each package what
+its dependencies are, but there are no guarantees that this
+specification is complete.  If you forget a dependency, then the
+package will build and work correctly on <emphasis>your</emphasis>
+machine if you have the dependency installed, but not on the end
+user's machine if it's not there.</para>
+
+<para>Since Nix on the other hand doesn’t install packages in “global”
+locations like <filename>/usr/bin</filename> but in package-specific
+directories, the risk of incomplete dependencies is greatly reduced.
+This is because tools such as compilers don’t search in per-packages
+directories such as
+<filename>/nix/store/5lbfaxb722zp…-openssl-0.9.8d/include</filename>,
+so if a package builds correctly on your system, this is because you
+specified the dependency explicitly.</para>
+
+<para>Runtime dependencies are found by scanning binaries for the hash
+parts of Nix store paths (such as <literal>r8vvq9kq…</literal>).  This
+sounds risky, but it works extremely well.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Multi-user support</title>
+
+<para>Nix has multi-user support.  This means that non-privileged
+users can securely install software.  Each user can have a different
+<emphasis>profile</emphasis>, a set of packages in the Nix store that
+appear in the user’s <envar>PATH</envar>.  If a user installs a
+package that another user has already installed previously, the
+package won’t be built or downloaded a second time.  At the same time,
+it is not possible for one user to inject a Trojan horse into a
+package that might be used by another user.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Atomic upgrades and rollbacks</title>
+
+<para>Since package management operations never overwrite packages in
+the Nix store but just add new versions in different paths, they are
+<emphasis>atomic</emphasis>.  So during a package upgrade, there is no
+time window in which the package has some files from the old version
+and some files from the new version — which would be bad because a
+program might well crash if it’s started during that period.</para>
+
+<para>And since package aren’t overwritten, the old versions are still
+there after an upgrade.  This means that you can <emphasis>roll
+back</emphasis> to the old version:</para>
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env --upgrade <replaceable>some-packages</replaceable>
+$ nix-env --rollback
+</screen>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Garbage collection</title>
+
+<para>When you uninstall a package like this…
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env --uninstall firefox
+</screen>
+
+the package isn’t deleted from the system right away (after all, you
+might want to do a rollback, or it might be in the profiles of other
+users).  Instead, unused packages can be deleted safely by running the
+<emphasis>garbage collector</emphasis>:
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-collect-garbage
+</screen>
+
+This deletes all packages that aren’t in use by any user profile or by
+a currently running program.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Functional package language</title>
+
+<para>Packages are built from <emphasis>Nix expressions</emphasis>,
+which is a simple functional language.  A Nix expression describes
+everything that goes into a package build action (a “derivation”):
+other packages, sources, the build script, environment variables for
+the build script, etc.  Nix tries very hard to ensure that Nix
+expressions are <emphasis>deterministic</emphasis>: building a Nix
+expression twice should yield the same result.</para>
+
+<para>Because it’s a functional language, it’s easy to support
+building variants of a package: turn the Nix expression into a
+function and call it any number of times with the appropriate
+arguments.  Due to the hashing scheme, variants don’t conflict with
+each other in the Nix store.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Transparent source/binary deployment</title>
+
+<para>Nix expressions generally describe how to build a package from
+source, so an installation action like
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env --install firefox
+</screen>
+
+<emphasis>could</emphasis> cause quite a bit of build activity, as not
+only Firefox but also all its dependencies (all the way up to the C
+library and the compiler) would have to built, at least if they are
+not already in the Nix store.  This is a <emphasis>source deployment
+model</emphasis>.  For most users, building from source is not very
+pleasant as it takes far too long.  However, Nix can automatically
+skip building from source and instead use a <emphasis>binary
+cache</emphasis>, a web server that provides pre-built binaries. For
+instance, when asked to build
+<literal>/nix/store/b6gvzjyb2pg0…-firefox-33.1</literal> from source,
+Nix would first check if the file
+<uri>https://cache.nixos.org/b6gvzjyb2pg0….narinfo</uri> exists, and
+if so, fetch the pre-built binary referenced from there; otherwise, it
+would fall back to building from source.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<!--
+<simplesect><title>Binary patching</title>
+
+<para>In addition to downloading binaries automatically if they’re
+available, Nix can download binary deltas that patch an existing
+package in the Nix store into a new version.  This speeds up
+upgrades.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+-->
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Nix Packages collection</title>
+
+<para>We provide a large set of Nix expressions containing hundreds of
+existing Unix packages, the <emphasis>Nix Packages
+collection</emphasis> (Nixpkgs).</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Managing build environments</title>
+
+<para>Nix is extremely useful for developers as it makes it easy to
+automatically set up the the build environment for a package. Given a
+Nix expression that describes the dependencies of your package, the
+command <command>nix-shell</command> will build or download those
+dependencies if they’re not already in your Nix store, and then start
+a Bash shell in which all necessary environment variables (such as
+compiler search paths) are set.</para>
+
+<para>For example, the following command gets all dependencies of the
+Pan newsreader, as described by <link
+xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applications/networking/newsreaders/pan/default.nix">its
+Nix expression</link>:</para>
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-shell '&lt;nixpkgs>' -A pan
+</screen>
+
+<para>You’re then dropped into a shell where you can edit, build and test
+the package:</para>
+
+<screen>
+[nix-shell]$ tar xf $src
+[nix-shell]$ cd pan-*
+[nix-shell]$ ./configure
+[nix-shell]$ make
+[nix-shell]$ ./pan/gui/pan
+</screen>
+
+<!--
+<para>Since Nix packages are reproducible and have complete dependency
+specifications, Nix makes an excellent basis for <a
+href="[%root%]hydra">a continuous build system</a>.</para>
+-->
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>Portability</title>
+
+<para>Nix runs on Linux and Mac OS X.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>NixOS</title>
+
+<para>NixOS is a Linux distribution based on Nix.  It uses Nix not
+just for package management but also to manage the system
+configuration (e.g., to build configuration files in
+<filename>/etc</filename>).  This means, among other things, that it
+is easy to roll back the entire configuration of the system to an
+earlier state.  Also, users can install software without root
+privileges.  For more information and downloads, see the <link
+xlink:href="http://nixos.org/">NixOS homepage</link>.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+<simplesect><title>License</title>
+
+<para>Nix is released under the terms of the <link
+xlink:href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html">GNU
+LGPLv2.1 or (at your option) any later version</link>.</para>
+
+</simplesect>
+
+
+</chapter>
diff --git a/doc/manual/introduction/introduction.xml b/doc/manual/introduction/introduction.xml
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..12b2cc761063
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/introduction/introduction.xml
@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+<part 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="chap-introduction">
+
+<title>Introduction</title>
+
+<xi:include href="about-nix.xml" />
+<xi:include href="quick-start.xml" />
+
+</part>
diff --git a/doc/manual/introduction/quick-start.xml b/doc/manual/introduction/quick-start.xml
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..0d13651e0ab3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/introduction/quick-start.xml
@@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
+<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="chap-quick-start">
+
+<title>Quick Start</title>
+
+<para>This chapter is for impatient people who don't like reading
+documentation.  For more in-depth information you are kindly referred
+to subsequent chapters.</para>
+
+<procedure>
+
+<step><para>Install single-user Nix by running the following:
+
+<screen>
+$ curl https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh
+</screen>
+
+This will install Nix in <filename>/nix</filename>. The install script
+will create <filename>/nix</filename> using <command>sudo</command>,
+so make sure you have sufficient rights.  (For other installation
+methods, see <xref linkend="chap-installation"/>.)</para></step>
+
+<step><para>See what installable packages are currently available
+in the channel:
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -qa
+docbook-xml-4.3
+docbook-xml-4.5
+firefox-33.0.2
+hello-2.9
+libxslt-1.1.28
+<replaceable>...</replaceable></screen>
+
+</para></step>
+
+<step><para>Install some packages from the channel:
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -i hello <replaceable>...</replaceable> </screen>
+
+This should download pre-built packages; it should not build them
+locally (if it does, something went wrong).</para></step>
+
+<step><para>Test that they work:
+
+<screen>
+$ which hello
+/home/eelco/.nix-profile/bin/hello
+$ hello
+Hello, world!
+</screen>
+
+</para></step>
+
+<step><para>Uninstall a package:
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -e hello</screen>
+
+</para></step>
+
+<step><para>You can also test a package without installing it:
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-shell -p hello
+</screen>
+
+This builds or downloads GNU Hello and its dependencies, then drops
+you into a Bash shell where the <command>hello</command> command is
+present, all without affecting your normal environment:
+
+<screen>
+[nix-shell:~]$ hello
+Hello, world!
+
+[nix-shell:~]$ exit
+
+$ hello
+hello: command not found
+</screen>
+
+</para></step>
+
+<step><para>To keep up-to-date with the channel, do:
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-channel --update nixpkgs
+$ nix-env -u '*'</screen>
+
+The latter command will upgrade each installed package for which there
+is a “newer” version (as determined by comparing the version
+numbers).</para></step>
+
+<!--
+<step><para>You can also install specific packages directly from
+your web browser.  For instance, you can go to <link
+xlink:href="http://hydra.nixos.org/jobset/nixpkgs/trunk/channel/latest"
+/> and click on any link for the individual packages for your
+platform.  Associate <literal>application/nix-package</literal> with
+the program <command>nix-install-package</command>.  A window should
+appear asking you whether it’s okay to install the package.  Say
+<literal>Y</literal>.  The package and all its dependencies will be
+installed.</para></step>
+-->
+
+<step><para>If you're unhappy with the result of a
+<command>nix-env</command> action (e.g., an upgraded package turned
+out not to work properly), you can go back:
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env --rollback</screen>
+
+</para></step>
+
+<step><para>You should periodically run the Nix garbage collector
+to get rid of unused packages, since uninstalls or upgrades don't
+actually delete them:
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-collect-garbage -d</screen>
+
+<!--
+The first command deletes old “generations” of your profile (making
+rollbacks impossible, but also making the packages in those old
+generations available for garbage collection), while the second
+command actually deletes them.-->
+
+</para></step>
+
+</procedure>
+
+</chapter>