nix-config VS vivarium

> I tried to install NixOS using the live cd last week in a Hyper-V VM, but it failed to get anywhere due to SquashFS errors.

Heh, that reminds me of installing NixOS back around 2014. I didn't have any way to physically boot off the install CD; so I ran it in qemu, using my real /dev/sda as the "virtual" hard drive (which I'd already partitioned). Thankfully there was no interference with the host system (Trisquel).

I'm still using (and evolved version of) the same NixOS config to this day; it still contains the following comment ( https://github.com/Warbo/nix-config/blob/master/nixos/machin... ):

  trace "FIXME: Which modules are artefacts of using QEMU to install?"

Where nixpkgs2105 is a pinned revision of the Nixpkgs repo, defined in another overlay. My current Nix config has pinned Nixpkgs versions going back to 2016. For example, here's a bunch of such overrides:

https://github.com/Warbo/nix-config/blob/master/overrides/fi...

At the moment I'm using niv to manage the pinned Nixpkgs versions (the 'repoXXXX' entries):

https://github.com/Warbo/nix-helpers/blob/master/nix/sources...

`nix-env` is an imperative command, whilst writing a .nix file is declarative. In particular, the latter can be managed using git.

For example, here's a system-wide config dating back to Feb 2015: https://github.com/Warbo/nix-config

(That's actually a NixOS config; my macOS config is in a private repo, but it imports that repo to define its "one big system package")

> I'd like to see other configs from nix users too if you're still here!

Here's mine https://github.com/warbo/nix-config

I've used Nix/NixOS for about 8 years, but not delved into flakes yet.

Take a look to Vivarium It is more recent it worked decently and it is remakably easy to config.

I wrote Vivarium specifically to behave like my old xmonad setup, although it isn't at all like xmonad internally. It's configurable in C.

Since various people are asking about xmonad-like tiling in wayland:

I wrote Vivarium[0] specifically to be a wayland compositor that behaves exactly like my (fairly simple) xmonad config, but it's a relatively new/unstable compositor and nothing like xmonad internally.

River[1] has a fantastic tiling model via user-provided executables, which makes it very flexible and probably a good fit for many people wanting something xmonad-like.

Waymonad[2] exists as a direct xmonad-like compositor, but I think development has been basically stalled for a long time. Sometimes there's discussion about reviving it though.

[0] https://github.com/inclement/vivarium

[1] https://github.com/ifreund/river

[2] https://github.com/waymonad/waymonad

Vivarium has xwayland as an option, enabled by default.

https://github.com/inclement/vivarium.git and https://github.com/djpohly/dwl.git are also great projects in the same vein.