nixos-configs VS nix

If you put your flake in a Git repository, you can reference the repo without having to clone it by using a flake reference syntax. I keep my flake in GitHub, so I use github:reckenrode/nixos-configs to reference it when running nixos-rebuild, etc.

I use a GitHub action to run nix flake update nightly to bump my flake. My systems are set to update nightly (rebooting as necessary). It’s bee mostly free of problems. I did lose my Raspberry Pi 4B+, but that was a pretty hacky set up, and I didn’t bother to dig into why it stopped booting. Otherwise, it’s been pretty smooth. The only time I’ve needed to boot into a previous generation was when I botched some config changes when updating to a new NixOS release.

I’m running NixOS on a QNAP TS-453D. I wiped the software that came with it and run on the bare metal. I’ve added 16 GiB of RAM and an AX210-based Wi-Fi card to it. Everything works pretty well with three 16 TiB SeaGate Ironwolf Pro drives on ZFS and an SSD for the NixOS install itself. My NixOS config for it is here.

DXVK is available in nixpkgs. If you install it, it provides the setup_dxvk.sh script to inject DXVK into a Wine prefix. For an example of a derivation that sets up a prefix and copies the DLLs into it manually, see the FFXIV derivation in my configs.

There are my configs: https://github.com/reckenrode/nixos-configs.

Thanks for the clarification. I think our goals are just divergent. I’m looking for something that uses the packages in nixpkgs and integrates nicely with my nixos-configs, which I use to declaratively manage my macOS environments (none of my Linux systems are capable of running the game).

My flake does most of those things. I don’t have any systems with WSL, so I’m not sure whether or how that would work. If it can be created by nixosSystem, then it would probably work. I take a pretty different approach in my flake though. I’ve structured it so I can define platforms, hosts, and users by convention. Adding a new host is just creating the right directory and dropping a configuration.nix in it. Still, that might not be helpful for your needs since you’ve already got an established convention.

I make use of multiple channels in my nixos-configs. Instead of using overlays, I pass them as specialArgs to the system build function (e.g., lib.nixosSystem). That lets me reference them in my configuration as just another set of packages (e.g., I reference flake-specific packages, unstable packages, and x86_64-darwin packages here). Note that you also need to pass them as extraSpecialArgs to your specialArgs to access them from your Home Manager configuration.

The way I handle it in my configs is to add unstable as an attribute via an overlay. If I need a package from unstable, I can use it via pkgs.unstable..

> https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/9911#issuecomment-19252073...

As we covered in my last post, NixOS is a amazing Linux distribution for creating stable and declared environments. Now while this is amazing for a desktop setup, it is also perfect for a home-server or home-lab.

(Nix itself is slowly chugging along with Windows via MinGW - https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nix-on-windows/1113/108 and https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/1320 , for example.)

Nix is a cross-platform package manager. It uses the nix programming language. Nix and NixOs are often used in the same context, but while the first is a package manager, the latter is a linux distribution based on nix.

Today I want to talk to you about Nixos. What is it? Nixos is a declarative and reproducible OS, partly taking the words used on their own page. What does that mean?

Software developers often want to customize:

1. their home environments: for packages (some reach for brew on MacOS) and configurations (dotfiles, and some reach for stow).

2. their development shells: for build dependencies (compilers, SDKs, libraries), tools (LSP, linters, formatters, debuggers), and services (runtime, database). Some reach for devcontainers here.

3. or even their operating systems: for development, for CI, for deployment, or for personal use.

Nix provision all of the above in the same language, with Nixpkgs, NixOS, home-manager, and devShells such as https://devenv.sh/. What's more, Nix is (https://nixos.org/):

- reproducible: what works on your dev machine also works in CI in prod,

- declarative: you version control and review your configurations and infrastructure as code, at a reasonable level of abstraction,

- reliable: all changes are atomic with easy roll back.

Hopping from one distro to another with a different package manager might require some time to adapt. Using a package manager that can be installed on most distro is one way to help you get to work faster. Flatpak is one of them; other alternative are Snap, Nix or Homebrew. Flatpak is a good starter, and if you have a bunch of free time, I suggest trying Nix.

- it reduces bloat, because you can generate an environment or OS image with only the software needed to run a specific program or service

My guess is that a big efficiency gain would come from the second point, because you don't waste CPU on code that you don't use.

Does this make sense? Has anyone explored this?

[0]: https://nixos.org

1) Setting up the development environment - I currently use devcontainers for most things, but may also dig into nix -> isolated, portable, repeatable development environment 2) Exploring Echo - understand routing, requests, response, etc. 3) Incorporate Templ - integration with Echo, template composition, etc. 4) Integrating TailwindCSS - config for use with Echo/Templ, development cycle, deployment, etc. 5) Add in HTMX - endpoints, template structure, concepts, etc. 6) hyperscript for interactivity - client side interactivity