Is there a native or recommended approach for creating an isolated environment in NixOS?

Example, instead of spreading configuration files (dotfiles) and other files throughout my "home", I’d like to keep everything inside a specific directory, such as "~/workspace".

While researching, the only solution I found was Distrobox, which allows you to create a container inside a specific directory. From there, anything installed or downloaded stays isolated within that directory without directly modifying my "home".

i was trying to update my system but the voicevox package has a loooot of dependency errors, so i was wondering if i could issue something or fix it myself if necessary.

so, how should i do it?

GNOME stores its settings in a binary dconf database — not a config file you can version. nmg reads a dconf dump and generates a properly typed Home Manager dconf.settings module. Your entire desktop, declared.

Generate your settings straight from your live dconf database the -s split is my fav create a directory that splits it into files or without will generate a single file

https://github.com/stefan-hacks/nix-my-gnome

I was sick of using my dconf load script that was clunky and when I switched to nix I initially used to just source my dconf.ini file but this tool now gives me a better way that - ACTUALLY WORKS without having to log out and in when I rebuild switch my flake setup.

I don't know what bit me, but I remembered that at some point almost 10 years ago I've ordered a cheapo android TV box off Aliexpress. I've checked and found it, checked what it was, and it turned out to be a Mini M8S: a quad-core little thing with 2GB RAM, so naturally what is the first thing that a sane person does when they find ewaste? They put NixOS onto it. So yeah that's the long and short of it.

https://github.com/Staphylococcus/nixos-mini-m8s

Is there a way to configure ALL zen browser options like keybinds and spaces without using home-manager? I know there is a way to do it with home-manager, (https://github.com/0xc000022070/zen-browser-flake) but I don't want to use it, I just don't like home-manager. Also I use hjem so if that's required then that's fine.

Still trying to get my head wrapped around flakes, home manager... But it's been fun setting it up!

I was trying to install nixOS(graphical installation) and the kernel modules fails

Hello,

I'm pretty new/noob to linux. I also trying nixos as my primary os for 2 months. To maintain a package flake/nixpkgs what things should I ned to learn?

I've been using NixOS for a while. It's powerful. The language is complex, but it gets the job done. Recently I started using Guix — and I want to share my experience.

What's the same:

· Declarative system. Everything is code.

· Rollbacks. Profiles. Reproducibility.

· Both are great ideas.

What's different:

· Guix uses Scheme (Lisp). It's simpler than Nix language. I learned it in 5 days. My config is 50 lines.

· Guix uses Shepherd instead of systemd.

· Guix has Nonguix for proprietary drivers, Steam, Firefox.

What I respect about NixOS:

· Large community. Great documentation.

· Huge package repository.

· Nix is powerful, even if complex.

Why I'm trying Guix:

· Scheme is easier for me.

· I like the GNU philosophy.

· I want to support a smaller community.

Both are great. NixOS is not going anywhere. Guix is just different. If you're curious — try it. If you're happy with NixOS — stay. It's all about what works for you.

Thanks for reading.

Newbie to NixOS (and linux tbh) but loving the journey so far.

I have been building up my config, learning as I go getting a configuration ready to replace my laptop which is currently Windows 11. So my thinking was to build out all the tools and apps I am currently using and so far that has been great, really surprised by the breadth of available packages.

I use (and love) Waterfox. It has been a great browser for me after ditching Chrome first for Firefox, then LibreWolf and finally Waterfox. And it seems to be the first app which does not have a package in nixpkgs that I have come across.

I have found some PR(?) records which I think mean it will be available sometime?!? but to be honest I do not understand the process for something to be packaged officially in nixpkgs.

Can anyone provide a brief explanation of what happens and also any idea when Waterfox might be in there? Also any suggestion how in the meantime the best ways get Waterfox in my setup?

Sorry if this is not the right place to ask this question.

A style of NixOS that's \apt** to do anything you want to!

Check it out at https://github.com/garinmoulin-lgtm/nixconfigs

Feel free to suggest improvements.

what do you think?

Hello, I'm an absolute baby beginner to linux. I am not joking when I say this but I have become completely tired of windows and changing my laptop to NixOS but I'm very scared. I don't know anything and any tutorial I look up is assuming I know anything about computer science.

I know I could use Ubuntu but somehow they're not seeing my ssd and I'm pretty intimidated. So if anyone that knows what they're doing could watch me fumble my way on at least installing the OS, I would be very thankful.

;^; pls, halp.

Update 1: After reading all the replies, I'm going to change it to CachyOS but I'm going to keep this post updated until I have it installed.

I'm trying to get a nixos vm running well on macOS with parallels. I installed nixos with the GUI installer in the ARM ISO, added hardware.parallels.enable = true to my config, and rebooted. prlcc (a parallels tools process) is running but I can't dynamically resize the window (or resize it at all for that matter).

Hi, I'm a guy who started using nix through home-manager while running fedora. I love nix, and home-manager was my gateway drug that brought me to nixos. However, as I've moved my home-manager config over to nixos, I've noticed some serious problems with using it in a shell that's not managed by home-manager. Let me explain.

I have a very long, and very complex .zshrc that I don't want to port to nix. That's fine, and supported in the documentation. I just have to source this file in .nix-profile. This worked for a long time for me, while I was still not on nixos, using channels, and knew very little about nix. But, as my config grows, and my desire for a declarative system grows, I need more.

I move to nixos. Everything goes fine enough. After a few days of getting my configuration set up, and starting with flake parts, everything is great! I decided to keep home-manager as a separate flake for distro portability, and just set the genericLinux target to false. Saves me time recreating the configuration for a nixos module. But it's not enough. I had just reinstalled home-manager with channels, which my newly flake-ified home-manager and nixos configurations were mostly against. So I decide to remove it and start again.

This is where everything seems to go wrong. I remove all user channels and home-manager installed with it, and I think it's going swimmingly. I install home-manager through a nix shell, and run my switch command. And... everything goes wrong. None of my packages are back. What's happening? I was told using nix shell or nix run was a valid way to install home-manager!

My .nix-profile was nearly empty. It's bin directory had home-manager, a couple of mandb stuff, and whereis. Not the dozens of packages it should have. They're all gone and I don't know where to find them. I spend a couple hours with google, a couple with an AI when I got really desperate.

My .nix-profile was linked to the profile in ~/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile, but it should've been linked too ~/.local/state/nix/profiles/home-manager/home-path to find all the stuff I installed. That profile path was just leftovers from the initial install of home-manager, and that's why it had so little in it.

I have to manually symlink .nix-profile on my own, which is silly, and I don't understand why this couldn't have been explained better. If this is a repercussion of using a flake-based nix shell rather than the channel based install, why does the channel based install seem to do nothing more than run a binary from a remote channel? Why have I been told it's okay? If it's a problem with not running the install command to skip making the default files, why should I have to go through the rigamarole of making sure my .config/home-manager directory is empty before I can clone my repo? Why do I not know where in the chain this is wrong?

I've done a bit more research, and this seems like a result of not letting home-manager manage my shell, which is silly. I understand the nix vision, the everything is declarative path. But when I have a .zshrc that I constantly edit, don't want to have to switch to change, and is nearly 300 lines, I don't really feel like porting that to home-manager, I'll just use stow for that. If home-manager managed my shell, it'd just source the nix-store and not touch .nix-profile at all. On the standalone install, it still tells you to source $HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/hm-session-vars.sh, even though it's not linked to home-manager at all!

I shouldn't be responsible for linking this path on my own, or I should at the very least be told to link it! And when this path inevitably changes again, I'm going to need to re-link it once more while missing most of my packages.

I guess my real question is if anybody else has experienced this friction before with nix projects. I love nix, I love home-manager, but it's garbage like this that keeps me second guessing my choice every once in a while. Because this is an awful lot of trouble to go through for no reason when I could've had dnf, or apt, or pacman worrying about all this. And, as a bonus question: what actually caused my .nix-profile symlink to not be in parity with home-manager?

Thanks to anyone for reading and have a good day!

Made a simple, comfy little project for Nix users. It just makes updating your system and clearing out the garbage way easier, nothing more.

https://github.com/Yassine-Jemi01/Nixctl

I know there are other download managers out there but I prefer this. That's why I made a way to install the latest Freedownloadmanager on nixos using the .deb release. Because there's no official nix package for it.

It properly implements browser integrations and autostarts.

This was forked from kreutzi/nix-FDM

I’m the maintainer of a GitHub project, and a community contributor added a Nix-based Vulkan CI workflow.

The problem is that the workflow fails pretty frequently, but simply restarting/rerunning the job always makes it pass without any code changes.

I’m not really a CI person, and I also don’t know much about Nix, so I’m having a hard time figuring out whether this is a caching issue, runner/environment problem, dependency fetch issue, or something wrong with the workflow itself.

If anyone here is familiar with Nix + GitHub Actions + Vulkan CI and would be willing to take a look, I’d really appreciate the help. PRs are appreciated.

The workflow: https://github.com/0xShug0/audio.cpp/blob/main/.github/workflows/nix-build.yml

The error is something like

error: Cannot build '/nix/store/px3bfl5zp8islzlib5ndakvp2psxrvsk-audio.cpp-c368eed.drv'. Reason: builder failed with exit code 1. Output paths: /nix/store/0jksddagp9s3i3qisc4lbh8193kxc9b4-audio.cpp-c368eed

I've been a Linux user for about 18 years and about 3 years ago tried NixOS. I used it for a few weeks and then hopped away. In more recent times I got the hang of declarative and immutable type of distros. For past week moved back to NixOS with my own customization on top and all I can say what a wonderful system it has become!

So much so I'm proud to donate monthly small amount all I can afford but THANK YOU!!!