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?

Usage: hey [global-options] [command] [sub-options]

Available Commands:
  check                  Run 'nix flake check' on your dotfiles
  gc                     Garbage collect & optimize nix store
  generations            Explore, manage, diff across generations
  help [SUBCOMMAND]      Show usage information for this script or a subcommand
  rebuild                Rebuild the current system's flake
  repl                   Open a nix-repl with nixpkgs and dotfiles preloaded
  rollback               Roll back to last generation
  search                 Search nixpkgs for a package
  show                   [ARGS...]
  ssh HOST [COMMAND]     Run a bin/hey command on a remote NixOS system
  swap PATH [PATH...]    Recursively swap nix-store symlinks with copies (or back).
  test                   Quickly rebuild, for quick iteration
  theme THEME_NAME       Quickly swap to another theme module
  update [INPUT...]      Update specific flakes or all of them
  upgrade                Update all flakes and rebuild system

Options:
    -d, --dryrun                     Don't change anything; preform dry run
    -D, --debug                      Show trace on nix errors
    -f, --flake URI                  Change target flake to URI
    -h, --help                       Display this help, or help for a specific command
    -i, -A, -q, -e, -p               Forward to nix-env

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 you manage secrets?

  With agenix.

• How do I change the default username?

  1. Set the USER environment variable 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 envy Guix's CLI and want similar for NixOS, but its toolchain is spread across many commands, none of which are as intuitive: nix, nix-collect-garbage, nixos-rebuild, nix-env, nix-shell.

  I don't claim hey is the answer, but everybody likes their own brew.

• How 2 flakes?

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

  No. Suffer my pain:

  • 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.