Table of Contents

• Showcase (Qtile)
• Introduction
• Getting Started
  • Partitioning & Formatting
  • WARNING
  • Nix-Channels
• Minimal Installation Process
  • Mount & Create Required Dirs
  • Prepare System Environment for Nix-Flake
• Nix-Flake: Beginning of a Journey
  • Clone Snowflake and Link Files To Dir
  • Replacing Necessary Configuration Entries
    • Create Your Hosts Directory
    • Hardware-Configuration.nix
    • Hide Your FileSystem From Nautilus & Dolphin
    • Installing Nix-Flake System
• Doom Emacs
• Congratulations! 🎉
• Useful Links
• Special Thanks

Showcase (Qtile)

Introduction

A hamerspace containing a declarative NixOS environment consisting of many hand-crafted configurations, ranging from: Kitty, Alacritty, Doom-Emacs, Zathura to many other applications which can be found in the ./home directory.

Warning This repository, similar to other dotfile/configuration repositories, is subjected to change.

The reader ought to read through the commit history before blindly cloning, fetching or updating the necessary files required to power up their NixOS environment!

In this README I will attempt to explain how to replicate my NixOS setup or achieve similar feats. If you find this guide not as useful as it was designed to be, do submit an issue requesting a change for the specific sections you found to be confusing. Or submit a push request (PR) to this repository and hopefully we can produce better results together!

Throughout my Nix journey, I've came across two interesting projects and among those projects are Nix-Flakes and Home-Manager. (Both projects will be introduced later in this README.) These projects have been setup in such manner that allows its users to carefully tune their system environments to their liking!

One should note that this project is still in its early stages! Henceforth one should familiarize themselves with the Risks that comes with the usage of such experimental features.

Getting Started

Partitioning & Formatting

Here I advice you to follow to carefully written guide by the lovely NixOS members about partitions, how to setup your partitions & later format them to their desired file-systems.

WARNING

Warning The following guide is written with nixos-gnome-21.05.1205.b72bde7c4a1-x86_64-linux.iso in mind. Meaning that the attempt to install your Nix-Flake system from the LiveUSB won't work. You should instead proceed with a minimal NixOS installation and later attempt to upgrade to your Nix-Flake system!

Nix-Channels

Setup your environment ot use the bleeding edge repository of NixOS and also add Home-Manager to your nix-channels:

sudo nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable nixos
sudo nix-channel --update

Minimal Installation Process

In nixos-gnome-21.05.1205.b72bde7c4a1-x86_64-linux.iso, it's unfortunately not possible to setup your flake based system without having Nix fail the installation process. Thus the user ought to install a minimal setup and later switch to their flake-based system after rebooting their minimal setup.

Mount & Create Required Dirs

sudo mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/boot
sudo mount /dev/disk/by-label/boot /mnt/boot

To prevent future crashes throughout the installation process, enable your newly created swap partition:

sudo swapon /dev/sdX

Prepare System Environment for Nix-Flake

Don't forget to append the following lines of code to your configuration.nix:

nix.package = pkgs.nixUnstable;
nix.extraOptions = ''
  experimental-features = nix-command flakes
'';

Nix-Flake: Beginning of a Journey

Clone Snowflake and Link Files To Correct Path

git clone your desired repository and because this guide is written with my personal flake repository in mind:

git clone https://github.com/Icy-Thought/Snowflake.git

Backup the contents of your current /etc/nixos directory, you'll need your auto-generated hardware-configuration.nix file to later place it inside its specified hosts/deviceX (where deviceX is the name of your device folder.

I prefer to keep my configurations inside my git repository for easier management, but you are free to do whatever you deem saner in the following installation process:

cd Snowflake
sudo ln -s flake.nix /etc/nixos
sudo ln -s flake.lock /etc/nixos

Replacing Necessary Configuration Entries

Create Your Hosts Directory

Create a directory inside the hosts with the name of the desired hostname for that device; let's call this directory X.

mkdir -p hosts/X

Now create a default.nix file inside that folder and for the sake of speeding the process up.

Note I suggest you copy over my thinkpad-e595/default.nix to your directory (X) and later customize it to your liking.

cd hosts && cp thinkpad-e595/default.nix X

Hardware-Configuration.nix

Place your newly generated hardware-configuration.nix inside your hosts/X and make sure to import your hardware-configuration.nix in the default.nix file of your device folder.

(Example): ThinkPad-E595 defined as a valid system environment.

import = [ ./hardware-configuration.nix ];

Hide Your FileSystem From Nautilus & Dolphin

Note By default, Nautilus & Dolphin does not hide system partitions from mounted devices category.

I have chosen to hide those partitions from the mounted devices category of the mentioned file managers. I have also added several kernel parameters and other device-specific configurations for my setup in this repository. (check hosts/deviceX)

What you are required to edit is:

1. fileSystems entries in default.nix.
2. The specific parts which you wish to exclude from your setup, such as: kernel parameters, modules to disable, packages to be installed among other configurations.

(Example): hiding /boot from Nautilus mounted devices.

fileSystems."/boot" = {
  device = "/dev/disk/by-label/boot";
  fsType = "vfat";
  options = [ "x-gvfs-hide" ]; # For hiding boot partition entry in Nautilus.
};

Make sure to replace /dev/disk/by-uuid/xyz (or partuuid) with /dev/disk/by-label/X, where X follows the label you have choosen to name your partitions with during your partition setup.

Installing Nix-Flake System

After completing your setup, there remains one command to be executed (device = folder name of your device placed inside hosts, which in this case is X:

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake '/etc/nixos#X --impure
reboot

Doom Emacs

If you have replicated my setup, you need to do nothing but git clone doom-emacs repository and enable the emacs module in your X/default.nix:

modules.desktop.editors.emacs.enable = true;

To proceed with the installation of doom-emacs on your newly installed/configured nix-flake system:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs ~/.emacs.d
~/.emacs.d/bin/doom install

Congratulations! 🎉

You have successful installed your/my personally hand-crafted/replicated Nix-Flake environment. I hope it suits your needs, if not then you are always welcome to propose changes or fork the project and customize the repository to your heart's content!

Useful Links

• NixOS Manual: A manual for the newcomer to read and understand different parts of the NixOS distribution.
• Home-Manager: Helps you manage your ~/home related configurations.
• Nix Pills: A series written to familiarize the user with the Nix programming language.
• Nixpkgs Unstable: A manual which introduces the Nix-language to people unfamiliar with the wonders of this language.
• Nix Flake MVP: A written Nix guide by edolstra.
• A Tour of Nix: a beautifully crafted introduction into the Nix programming language.

Special Thanks

• hlissner/dotfiles: nix-flake skeleton!