Install NixOS

[zmitchell]

As a new user it's often difficult to get NixOS installed because you may need a wired connection, which can be impractical. One solution is to create your own NixOS installer that already has WiFi drivers baked into the image along with any other packages that you already know that you want.

Creating a NixOS installation this way ensures that the ISO image already contains the Nix store that you need to boot into a fully functioning machine, which can be used as a first install or a rescue image.

This tutorial would follow the tutorial on installing NixOS in a VM, and would walk a user through the process of:

• Taking an existing configuration.nix (from the previous tutorial)
• Producing a bootable image (ISO format) https://nix.dev/tutorials/nixos/building-bootable-iso-image
  • I consider it a requirement that this also cover building for a different system e.g. building an x86_64-linux image on aarch64-darwin.
• Booting that and then referring to another tutorial for installation (disk partitioning etc)

[zmitchell]

We already have this page Building a bootable ISO image but this page is very bare bones and not really what I would consider a "tutorial" in its current state.

[fricklerhandwerk]

This tutorial should probably incorporate disko, as anything else is just too much of a hassle.

[willbush]

Wish I knew about disko when I made this tutorial https://willbush.dev/blog/impermanent-nixos/. I've been thinking to update it to use disko and perhaps a non-flake based version of it. Anyways it covers creating a bootable ISO.