And I say hey, what's going on?
Hey, you. You're finally awake. You were trying to configure your OS declaratively, right? Walked right into that NixOS ambush, same as us, and those dotfiles over there.
Disclaimer: This is not a community framework or distribution. It's a private configuration and an ongoing experiment to feel out NixOS. I make no guarantees that it will work out of the box for anyone but myself. It may also change drastically and without warning.
Until I can bend spoons with my nix-fu, please don't treat me like an authority or expert in the NixOS space. Seek help on the NixOS discourse instead.
Shell: | zsh + zgenom |
DM: | lightdm + lightdm-mini-greeter |
WM: | bspwm + polybar |
Editor: | Doom Emacs |
Terminal: | st |
Launcher: | rofi |
Browser: | firefox |
GTK Theme: | Ant Dracula |
Acquire NixOS 21.11 or newer:
# Yoink nixos-unstable
wget -O nixos.iso https://channels.nixos.org/nixos-unstable/latest-nixos-minimal-x86_64-linux.iso
# Write it to a flash drive
cp nixos.iso /dev/sdX
Boot into the installer.
Switch to root user: sudo su -
Do your partitions and mount your root to /mnt
(for
example).
Install these dotfiles:
nix-shell -p git nixFlakes
# Set HOST to the desired hostname of this system
HOST=...
# Set USER to your desired username (defaults to hlissner)
USER=...
git clone https://github.com/hlissner/dotfiles /etc/dotfiles
cd /etc/dotfiles
# Create a host config in `hosts/` and add it to the repo:
mkdir -p hosts/$HOST
nixos-generate-config --root /mnt --dir /etc/dotfiles/hosts/$HOST
rm -f hosts/$HOST/configuration.nix
cp hosts/kuro/default.nix hosts/$HOST/default.nix
vim hosts/$HOST/default.nix # configure this for your system; don't use it verbatim!
git add hosts/$HOST
# Install nixOS
USER=$USER nixos-install --root /mnt --impure --flake .#$HOST
# If you get 'unrecognized option: --impure', replace '--impure' with
# `--option pure-eval no`.
# Then move the dotfiles to the mounted drive!
mv /etc/dotfiles /mnt/etc/dotfiles
Then reboot and you're good to go!
:warning: Don't forget to change your
root
and$USER
passwords! They are set tonixos
by default.
And I say, bin/hey
, what's going on?
Usage: hey [global-options] [command] [sub-options]
Available Commands:
check Run 'nix flake check' on your dotfiles
gc Garbage collect & optimize nix store
generations Explore, manage, diff across generations
help [SUBCOMMAND] Show usage information for this script or a subcommand
rebuild Rebuild the current system's flake
repl Open a nix-repl with nixpkgs and dotfiles preloaded
rollback Roll back to last generation
search Search nixpkgs for a package
show [ARGS...]
ssh HOST [COMMAND] Run a bin/hey command on a remote NixOS system
swap PATH [PATH...] Recursively swap nix-store symlinks with copies (and back).
test Quickly rebuild, for quick iteration
theme THEME_NAME Quickly swap to another theme module
update [INPUT...] Update specific flakes or all of them
upgrade Update all flakes and rebuild system
Options:
-d, --dryrun Don't change anything; perform dry run
-D, --debug Show trace on nix errors
-f, --flake URI Change target flake to URI
-h, --help Display this help, or help for a specific command
-i, -A, -q, -e, -p Forward to nix-env
Why NixOS?
Because managing hundreds of servers is the tenth circle of hell without a declarative, generational, and immutable single-source-of-truth configuration framework like NixOS.
Sure beats the nightmare of capistrano/chef/puppet/ansible + brittle shell scripts I left behind.
Should I use NixOS?
Short answer: no.
Long answer: no really. Don't.
Long long answer: I'm not kidding. Don't.
Unsigned long long answer: Alright alright. Here's why not:
If none of this has deterred you, then you didn't need my advice in the first place. Stop procrastinating and try NixOS!
How do you manage secrets?
With agenix.
Why did you write bin/hey?
I envy Guix's CLI and want similar for NixOS, whose toolchain is spread across
many commands, none of which are as intuitive: nix
, nix-collect-garbage
,
nixos-rebuild
, nix-env
, nix-shell
.
I don't claim hey
is the answer, but everybody likes their own brew.
How 2 flakes?
Would it be the NixOS experience if I gave you all the answers in one, convenient place?
No. Suffer my pain: