helm/README.md

Hey, you. You're finally awake. You were trying to configure your OS declaratively, right? Walked right into that NixOS ambush, same as us, and those dotfiles over there.

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Shell:	zsh + zgen
DM:	lightdm + lightdm-mini-greeter
WM:	bspwm + polybar
Editor:	Doom Emacs (and occasionally vim)
Terminal:	st
Launcher:	rofi
Browser:	firefox
GTK Theme:	Ant Dracula

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Quick start

1. Yoink the latest build of NixOS 21.05.
2. Boot into the installer.
3. Do your partitions and mount your root to /mnt (for example)
4. Install these dotfiles:
5. nix-shell -p git nixFlakes
6. git clone https://github.com/hlissner/dotfiles /mnt/etc/nixos
7. Install NixOS: nixos-install --root /mnt --flake /mnt/etc/nixos#XYZ, where XYZ is the host you want to install. Use #generic for a simple, universal config, or create a sub-directory in hosts/ for your device. See host/kuro for an example.
8. Reboot!
9. Change your root and $USER passwords!

Management

And I say, bin/hey. What's going on?

Command	Description
hey check	Run tests and checks for this flake
hey gc	Runs nix-collect-garbage -d. Use --all to clean up system profile too.
hey rebuild	Rebuild this flake (shortcut: hey re)
hey rollback	Roll back to previous system generation
hey show	Show flake outputs of this repo
hey ssh REMOTE [COMMAND]	Run a bin/hey command on REMOTE over ssh
hey upgrade	Update flake lockfile and switch to it (shortcut: hey up)

Frequently asked questions

• Why NixOS?

  Because declarative, generational, and immutable configuration is a godsend when you have a fleet of computers to manage.

• How do I change the default username?

  1. Set USER the first time you run nixos-install: USER=myusername nixos-install --root /mnt --flake /path/to/dotfiles#XYZ
  2. Or change "hlissner" in modules/options.nix.

• Why did you write bin/hey?

  I'm nonplussed by the user story for nix's CLI tools and thought fixing it would be more productive than complaining about it on the internet. Then I thought, why not do both?

• How 2 flakes?

  Would it be the NixOS experience if I gave you all the answers in one, convenient place?

  No, but here are some resources that helped me:

  • A three-part tweag article that everyone's read.
  • An overengineered config to scare off beginners.
  • A minimalistic config for scared beginners.
  • A nixos wiki page that spells out the format of flake.nix.
  • Official documentation that nobody reads.
  • Some great videos on general nixOS tooling and hackery.
  • A couple flake configs that I may have shamelessly rummaged through.
  • Some notes about using Nix
  • What helped me figure out generators (for npm, yarn, python and haskell)
  • What y'all will need when Nix drives you to drink.