nixos-config VS disko

I’ve been using Nix directly on MacOS with minimal issues for a few years now. Works great.

I hate using docker on Mac and have since replaced it with flakes and devenv.

My configuration with a step by step guide (600+ stars): https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config

I tried to make Nix as easy to adopt as possible by creating Nix commands and a step by step guide: https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config

I love Nix. I use it every day to manage multiple local dev environments. And I use devenv instead of docker for sharing project-specific environments with others.

Felt (still am, actually) this problem too. Started with the same approach (Vanilla Emacs) a few years back in order to really learn the ins-and-outs after giving DOOM and others a shot and feeling like I didn't have the faintest what was really going on with all the magic. I somehow did end up falling in love with Emacs again[^1].

Won't lie... there was a fair amount of cursing involved and, despite the love, I wouldn't recommend many to venture down this road[^2].

Now I have gone the literate config way in my dotfiles https://github.com/vidbina/dotfiles/tree/main/emacs and I jump between Cursor (vscode-based), Neovim and Emacs for different tasks on a daily. I also found dustinlyons/nixos-config (https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config/blob/main/module...) just a few days ago and figured that could be a fun resource when you're building yours up.

Take it as a hobby. There are a bunch of nice things that I picked up from Emacs (a. literate configs, b. comfort around working with LISPs, c. bigger appreciation for parts of the GNU ecosystem, d. more in-depth understanding of how my editor works which helps me debug issues in Neovim or vscode when I see them) but I still think that I'm cursed by wanting to go down this road so badly. Wish I could just vscode my way through live and build dope stuff, unencumbered.

1: Used Emacs heavily in college over 12 years ago when I would boot the Windows + Novell groupware school computers into my own Ubuntu config with my Emacs and embedded dev toolchain from my pendrive.

2: The single-threaded-ness and related ocassional unresponsiveness/hangups still grind my gears.

Here is my flake using home manager on Mac: https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config

What do I need to do to switch from an official Nix install to using nix-installer on macOS? Just uninstall the current nix and install using nix-installer?

My config is loosely based off https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config if this matters. Using nix-darwin.

My configuration uses Nix.

Not my personal notes, but how I do my writing and organize my thoughts. This is my Nix configuration that powers my Macbook, Linux PC, and home lab server. Emacs + org-roam to capture everything. https://github.com/dustinlyons/nixos-config

It's mostly bash scripts (I know I have stockholm syndrome there) and nixos-rebuild: https://www.haskellforall.com/2023/01/announcing-nixos-rebui...

All the nix deployment tools had too much magic and broke, but nixos-rebuild always works and it's part of Nix!

Disko was great for bootstrapping servers: https://github.com/nix-community/disko

I'm now running impermanence on NixOS servers. Setting it up was slightly more work, obviously, but it's been... freeing in a sense. My confidence that I can rebuild all servers at any time and that all the peculiarities of my setup are documented have never been higher.

Rather than using a script for setup, I am using disko [0] with nixos-anywhere [1] and a small home-grown script that integrates with 1Password for deployments and it's wonderful, because everything including disk formatting is now purely declarative.

[0] https://github.com/nix-community/disko

[1] https://github.com/numtide/nixos-anywhere

Your can also look at disko

It's a simple NixOS module that creates disk images from your disko configuration, with NixOS installed onto them.

The closest thing would be to look at the live disk implementation, but obviously it doesn't automount any files systems. I think particular to disk problems, disko is supposed to help: https://github.com/nix-community/disko but I haven't gotten around to playing with it to verify.

For actually writing partitions, there is disko (though I have not used it).

If it's just disk formatting you want to automate, then check out disko.

I guess if all else fails, ignore the instructions? Does the quickstart guide need to be updated?

Check out disko

Looking at your other comments in this thread, you may want to look at the disko tmpfs.nix example which is a simplified NixOS ❄: tmpfs as root setup and then possibly the ZFS equivalent Erase your darlings. These setups minimize the statefull information kept on disk.