~/.mathieu

NixOS

In progress

Motivation

With some minor POP_OS! grievances, a want for easy re-installation and need for something fresh, I want to use a new Linux distribution.

Grievances

  • I need to give in my PW twice (Drive encryption & Login)
  • It’s not stable anymore, random shutdowns
  • When going into sleep mode, the tiling manager shuffles my running applications
  • No easy reinstall
  • Lack of knowledge when stuff inside POP_OS! breaks
  • POP_OS! store is terrible

Using POP_OS! and Linux, I’ve come reliant on the tiling manager and launcher. This includes easy to use and flexible work-spaces, being able to drag a program to a new workspace was crucial for me

Some things that I’m curious about are the following

Wants & curiousity

Environment per project Currently I use 7mind -b to quickly go to my 7mind project. What if I can have a better ‘environment’ per project / work?

  • Different runtime versions of Elixir / Erlang (with ASDF?)
  • Different version of lexical
  • Scoped ‘file/project’ system
  • Different GIT user (or email)
  • ??

Easy and reproducible installs Currently I cannot quickly change from one install to another. I would like to be able to have the exact same system on any PC without much intervention. I’m one step closer now that I have Chezmoi for my dotfiles, but I still need to install different programs manually. (Kitty, Nerdfonts, bash, Chezmoi configuration, …)

Customisation It should be customizable, but to an extent. I don’t want to be dragged into a rabbit hole where I lose all my productivity.

Virtualisation Seeing Chris Titus YT video, a dedicated window virtualisation could be very interesting. No more dual boot for certain things!

  • eID shenigans
  • Dnd mapmaking
  • Photoshop?
  • Video games?

Why NixOS

Starting off

Learning QEMU I’ve started with the Minimal ISO image from NixOS.

I’ve chosen for the minimal so I can install Hyprland.

Using the QEMU command: qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -cdrom nixos-minimal-23.11.3326.d2003f2223cb-x86_64-linux.iso -boot menu=on -drive file=image.img -m 4G -cpu host -smp 4 -vga virtio -display sdl,gl=on -serial none I’ve been able to follow the installation instructions from NixOS Manual installation.

There was no need to use the wpa_cli since I’ve used the default QEMU networking.

First configuration file

# Edit this configuration file to define what should be installed on
# your system. Help is available in the configuration.nix(5) man page, on
# https://search.nixos.org/options and in the NixOS manual (`nixos-help`).
 
{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:
 
{
  imports =
    [ # Include the results of the hardware scan.
      ./hardware-configuration.nix
    ];
 
  # Use the GRUB 2 boot loader.
  # boot.loader.grub.enable = true;
  # boot.loader.grub.efiSupport = true;
  # boot.loader.grub.efiInstallAsRemovable = true;
  # boot.loader.efi.efiSysMountPoint = "/boot/efi";
  # Define on which hard drive you want to install Grub.
  #boot.loader.grub.device = "/dev/sda"; # or "nodev" for efi only
  boot.loader.systemd-boot.enable = true;
  boot.loader.efi.canTouchEfiVariables = true;
  
  networking.hostName = "nixos"; # Define your hostname.
  # Pick only one of the below networking options.
  # networking.wireless.enable = true;  # Enables wireless support via wpa_supplicant.
  networking.networkmanager.enable = true;  # Easiest to use and most distros use this by default.
 
  # Set your time zone.
  time.timeZone = "Europe/Berlin";
 
  # Configure network proxy if necessary
  # networking.proxy.default = "http://user:password@proxy:port/";
  # networking.proxy.noProxy = "127.0.0.1,localhost,internal.domain";
 
  # Select internationalisation properties.
  i18n.defaultLocale = "en_GB.UTF-8";
  # console = {
  #   font = "Lat2-Terminus16";
  #   keyMap = "us";
  #   useXkbConfig = true; # use xkb.options in tty.
  # };
 
  # Enable the X11 windowing system.
  services.xserver.enable = true;
  programs.hyprland.enable = true;
 
  # Configure keymap in X11
  services.xserver.xkb.layout = "us";
  # services.xserver.xkb.options = "eurosign:e,caps:escape";
 
  # Enable CUPS to print documents.
  # services.printing.enable = true;
 
  # Enable sound.
  sound.enable = true;
  hardware.pulseaudio.enable = true;
 
  # Enable touchpad support (enabled default in most desktopManager).
  # services.xserver.libinput.enable = true;
 
  # Define a user account. Don't forget to set a password with ‘passwd’.
  users.users.Thieu = {
    isNormalUser = true;
    extraGroups = [ "wheel" ]; # Enable ‘sudo’ for the user.
    packages = with pkgs; [
      floorp
      tree
    ];
  };
 
  # List packages installed in system profile. To search, run:
  # $ nix search wget
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    vim # Do not forget to add an editor to edit configuration.nix! The Nano editor is also installed by default.
    wget
  ];
 
  # Some programs need SUID wrappers, can be configured further or are
  # started in user sessions.
  # programs.mtr.enable = true;
  # programs.gnupg.agent = {
  #   enable = true;
  #   enableSSHSupport = true;
  # };
 
  # List services that you want to enable:
 
  # Enable the OpenSSH daemon.
  # services.openssh.enable = true;
 
  # Open ports in the firewall.
  # networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ ... ];
  # networking.firewall.allowedUDPPorts = [ ... ];
  # Or disable the firewall altogether.
  # networking.firewall.enable = false;
 
  # Copy the NixOS configuration file and link it from the resulting system
  # (/run/current-system/configuration.nix). This is useful in case you
  # accidentally delete configuration.nix.
  system.copySystemConfiguration = true;
 
  # This option defines the first version of NixOS you have installed on this particular machine,
  # and is used to maintain compatibility with application data (e.g. databases) created on older NixOS versions.
  #
  # Most users should NEVER change this value after the initial install, for any reason,
  # even if you've upgraded your system to a new NixOS release.
  #
  # This value does NOT affect the Nixpkgs version your packages and OS are pulled from,
  # so changing it will NOT upgrade your system.
  #
  # This value being lower than the current NixOS release does NOT mean your system is
  # out of date, out of support, or vulnerable.
  #
  # Do NOT change this value unless you have manually inspected all the changes it would make to your configuration,
  # and migrated your data accordingly.
  #
  # For more information, see `man configuration.nix` or https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/options#opt-system.stateVersion .
  system.stateVersion = "23.11"; # Did you read the comment?
}

Noteworthy

We’ve already installed hyprland using programs.hyprland.enable = true;

We’re using the UEFI boot

We’ve added a user “Thieu”, we needed to set this user password using a TTY session.

Some locales & keyboard inputs were also set.

End result

I’ve ended up adopting nix and I’m quite enjoying it. See my repo for all my configuration.

Recent Notes