nix-config VS nixos-search

All the resources mentioned in other comments are pretty good, but mostly they are unofficial. The official NixOS wiki is very outdated and unmaintained. You will have better luck reading other people’s configurations, nixpkgs source code and GitHub issues. For the nix language the official wiki is a nice reference https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/language/index.html. This configuration is a great starting point https://github.com/Misterio77/nix-config for learning by example. It covers most of what you may need, although bootstrapping your own config is quite rough. You may want to take a look at https://github.com/Misterio77/nix-starter-configs. It’s very basic and should be simple to understand and improve.

Yes. E.g. some guy's config with 6 different machines[1]: multiple desktops, laptops, servers, a Raspberry Pi, and a VPS. That's a rather advanced use of Nix for configuration, but definitely shows what it's capable of.

[1] https://github.com/Misterio77/nix-config

https://github.com/Misterio77/nix-config/blob/main/hosts/celaeno/services/hydra/lib/release-host-branch.nix https://github.com/Misterio77/nix-config/blob/main/hosts/celaeno/services/hydra/default.nix#L39

Implementation: https://github.com/Misterio77/nix-config/blob/main/pkgs/fetch-packwiz-pack/default.nix

the one i reference all the time is https://github.com/Misterio77/nix-config

I believe Misterio77's does use it in his config.

I reuse the same btrfs logic on all my computers, including a RPi: https://github.com/Misterio77/nix-config/blob/main/hosts/common/btrfs-optin-persistence.nix

For me, https://search.nixos.org/ is a better aid than the wiki. Often the right keyword in the NixOS packages or modules search will lead me right to the obvious and simple answer that I couldn't find elsewhere.

Does https://search.nixos.org/ pull from nixpkgs, the Nix User Repository, or both?

Just go to search.nixos.org, open the option you would like to see more of, and click on the link behind "Declared in".

I've done a nix-env query, and checked in https://search.nixos.org but can't seem to find any SAR package, nor any google search that gave any hints to see if it might be part of another system utility package...

If you want to install a package, search for it at https://search.nixos.org

The gnome system monitor is gnome.gnome-system-monitor for example https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=23.05&show=gnome.g...

search.nixos.org also includes flakes that people PR into the index via GitHub at https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-search/issues

ps: $ nix search exists via experimental flags https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/new-cli/nix3...

Idk about ec_sys, I couldn't find it on search.nixos.org, but since it's a kernel module it might just come with the kernel idk.

I rarely think to look at flakes by their source, actually. I have a Nixpkgs clone that I jump into for anything super ad-hoc but most of the time I'm just doing REPL, :lf ./. and mashing tab-completion. That's usually to make sure the thing I'm after exists in one of the large package sets like node, vimPlugins, or similar, and that I got the name right - which could probably be answered just as easily with https://search.nixos.org/ .

search.nixos.org