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---
title: NixOS Part 1
date: 2022-02-22
---
Recently, I switched both of my primary laptops from Arch (cesium/vulcan) and
Windows (carbon) to NixOS, mostly on a whim. Some friends of mine have been
encouraging me to try it out for a while, and I did so over the winter break on
Carbon, but I couldn't get flakes to work properly, so I abandoned it and put
Windows on it. What I needed from carbon was for it to work as a notetaking
tablet, and Windows came with OneNote so it was easy to get set up.
Ever since, NixOS has been in the back of my mind. The idea of a system
configuration tracked in Git that I can use on clients and servers intrigued me
and I wanted to see how I could use that in my systems administration.
# First Steps
The first thing I did was talk with my friends who were trying to get me to use
NixOS in the first place. They recommended that I go with setting up my flake
immediately, instead of trying to merge my existing `configuration.nix` into a
flake later. This turned out to be the right move, and I'm now tracking my
system configuration at [muirrum/nix](https://git.carathe.dev/muirrum/nix). This
has led to me being able to share a baseline configuration across both carbon
and cesium, including my user configuration and the packages I expect to have
(including neovim, zsh, firefox, and my custom fork of dwm).
# Encapsulate and Unif~~i~~y
Everything else I'm planning to split into modules, for both my user
configuration and my system configuration. I've already started this with
`nixos/modules/*.nix` and `home/modules/mail.nix` which set up system modules
like Steam, Darktable, and virtualization, as well as my mail sync systemd
service. That way, I can enable the things I need per-system, while still
maintaining the ability to centrally manage it. Now I can add
`./nixos/modules/steam.nix` to my system configuration and I get *my* Steam
setup on every system, every time. It's the same with Darktable, libvirtd, or
`mbsync`. Getting a unified system configuration is as simple as
`nixos-rebuild switch` in my flake directory. I'm planning on rolling this out
to my servers slowly, starting with my physical server during the next break.
# Packaging
NixOS is based on the Nix package manager, which allows developers to describe
exactly which versions of which packages should be built to make their app work
every time. I've been using this to package my bots and configure their
development environments so I don't have those tools polluting my `$PATH`
outside of the directories where I intend to work on them. I have one of my bots
set up to automatically build a small Docker image for me, so that I can quickly
push it up to my private registry.
# Conclusion
I plan to keep using NixOS for all my devices. I've found it fun to tinker with,
especially since it keeps a backup of previous versions of your system, so that
if you mess something up you can just reboot and choose a different one. I
haven't needed that *yet* but I'm sure it's coming soon, knowing how much I like
to mess with things that shouldn't be messed with.
I'll probably write about my experience getting NixOS set up on my home server
in another post.
|
