For anyone looking to try an accessible spin of NixOS for themselves or a relative, NixBook OS has been absolute gold for my use case.

You see, I was recently asked to install Linux on an elderly family member's computer. We wanted something locked down, hard to infect, and even harder to break. But something still familiar enough to a lifelong Windows user. Ideally we also wanted a setup I could access remotely for long distance tech support.

My first thought was to go with Zorin OS, which was my entry point to Linux back in February. But I hesitated at this thought because it would mean that I'd have to re-learn things in order to help whenever any technical problems arose.

Then it hit me: what if my relative just used NixOS, like I do? Then I’d be better able to help when issues arose. And I thought I could probably configure a host that made things more simple.

Now on the surface, that sounds absolutely nuts. Starting to use Linux, in your 70s, after a lifetime of Windows is already a tall order. But then adding NixOS on top of that would be asking too much for anyone.

Enter NixBook OS

This was a happy find I just stumbled across, when I started researching how to make NixOS easier to use. NixBook OS is basically a spin of NixOS that abstracts almost all of the complexity of using NixOS while still letting you have all the benefits. It's for new users who want a simple “chromebook like” computer experience

How does it work, exactly? Well NixBook OS ships preconfigured with Flatpak, printer support, auto-updating, garbage collection, and generation management scaled to disk space. It also ships with Cinnamon (the same desktop as Linux Mint) to feel familiar to Windows users.

One odd thing I clocked was that NixBook OS doesn't auto-optimise, which seems like a weird choice for a distro marketed toward older hardware, which usually has a lot less storage. But I guess since they intend you to install most things via Flatpak anyway, I imagine they assume anyone touching the config file knows enough to set up some other things like optimising.

And to be clear you can still change everything in in your /etc/nixos/configuration.nix. As long as you don't touch anything in /etc/nixbook, updates and support keep working.

The Setup

So after a few days of mucking about in a VM, I decided the best way to set up NixBook OS was to create a module called support.nix. I then imported it into the default configuration.nix. The module I created lets me add and remove packages, create a separate admin account just for me, lock down Flatpak and WiFi behind an admin password, and it sets up a way for me to remote access from my own NixOS computer.

Again, this is a separate module that is imported. So none of it interferes with auto-updates or touches the original config.

The Result

So far we are a few weeks in, and NixBook OS is working perfectly. It's a simple setup, and knowing my relative can't install anything without my password gives me real peace of mind. And should anything come up, all I need to do is open RustDesk and I will have immediate access to her computer.

Disclaimer, Literally

I have zero connection to the NixBook project. I'm just happy to share a project that actually makes NixOS accessible to real Linux beginners.

You can find the project here at their GitHub: https://github.com/mkellyxp/nixbook

And you can download their ISO here:
https://nixbookos.org/

i was just discovering apps then i came across the helix editor. its pretty good and have all basic to moderate features built in. but i dont understand why there is very little gossip or none about it while nvim gets so much hype.
i just switched to it and having very good experience till now.
anyone can share ur experience.. any thoughts about helix.

Hey everyone, I've been using NixOS for two weeks now and wanted to share some issues and annoyances I ran in to.
I recently bought a Framework 13 and decided to install NixOS on it. Coming from Arch it has been quite a bit different.

I want to preface this by mentioning that overall it has been a nice experience. I really like the declarative way of managing my system and the Nix language felt really easy to learn if you have prior programming experience. I don't want this to come off as a negative rant.

Installation

At first I wanted to use the GUI installer. However, I tend to place my home directory into its own btrfs subvolume, which the GUI installer didn't seem to allow. I ended up performing a manual installation based on the instructions provided in https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Btrfs .

I did end up using top-level subvolumes instead of nested subvolumes though, that's how I've been doing it on Arch.

Everything else went smoothly and I quickly had my system set up how I wanted it.

The Wiki confusion

Speaking of the wiki it's been a somewhat confusing situation for a newcomer. Searching for things online usually tends to bring up results from both the official wiki.nixos.org and nixos.wiki. Sometimes with the one wiki coming up first, sometimes the other. While both mostly have identical contents, sometimes one has information that's missing from the other.

Especially for a newcomer this is confusing. From my understanding wiki.nixos.org is the official wiki with the most up-to-date content?

To flake or not to flake

Something I've noticed from the start is that flakes seems to be the feature everyone is using. While I started out with not using flakes, I quickly found answers, guides, and tutorials online which expected flakes to be used on a system. I did switch over my configuration over to using flakes after a few days, since I found a guide online which used flakes. I knew the problem I was trying to solve could also be solved without flakes, but I didn't want to keep searching.

Overall I'm happy with using flakes to manage my configuration. I just wish this would be a bit more standardized. The split online between flakes and not flakes is a bit confusing for someone starting out.

Missing options in the configuration

Since my scanner is behind NAT, it cannot be found using broadcast messages. On Arch I simply edited /etc/sane.d/airscan.conf to add a manual entry for my scanner. Simple enough, there's probably just an extra options configuration I can add it to, right? Well not really. There's an issue dating back to 2016 which mentions that there's missing options: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/17411
This issue has been closed in favor of https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/295008, however the underlying problem has not been solved.

I ended up with this option in my config now (based on one of the comments in that issue), which took some time to understand what it's doing, and feels a bit hacky:

     extraBackends = [
      (pkgs.sane-airscan.overrideAttrs (previousAttrs: {
        postInstall = (previousAttrs.postInstall or "") + ''
        echo -e '[devices]\nCanon Scanner = http://192.168.10.50:80/eSCL/, eSCL' >> $out/etc/sane.d/airscan.conf
        '';
      }))

I had a similar issue with another package, where I ended up creating an overlay.

Searching for options and packages

What surprised me was that the common way for looking up options and packages seems to be using https://search.nixos.org . Coming from Arch I expected a local option. Looking in the wiki I found nix search which requires enabling experimental features.

Development environments

Using shells for different projects I'm working on felt really nice. However the option to both use nix-shell and nix develop was a bit confusing at the beginning. Most of the NixOS wiki doesn't cover creating development environments with flakes at all. I did quickly learn to create flakes with shell environments for g++ and Java.

One major issue has been python. I've been working with projects which expect you to use a virtual environment. After installing the modules with pip I ran into the famous

ImportError: libstdc++.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directoryImportError: libstdc++.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

After looking through the wiki I found out that the recommended way is to use buildFHSEnv. This however seems to be causing issues with direnv and using the shell in Visual Studio Code.

Other issues

Since I've been using VirtualBox on my previous system I decided to give it a try on NixOS. However to my surprise it was being compiled from source. I later learned that this is due to me enabling the extension pack which turns the package unfree. According to the wiki the proper way to avoid this is https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/71127 , which hasn't been worked on since 2019.

After building VirtualBox I ran into a segfault with an issue which has been open since 2021. After adding an environment variable as described here https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/149812#issuecomment-1004387735 it ended up working though.

Since the wiki recommends using virt-manager instead I decided to give that a try. However I'm getting a lot worse performance than with virtual box.

been using for more than 6 months

Hi everyone! I’m working on Nix Pro, a JetBrains plugin with native Nix language support and integrations with Nix tools and language servers.

The latest version, version 2026.1.12 focuses on setup, flake updates, navigation, and debugging:

• Easier nixd setup: The setup assistant detects NixOS and Home Manager configurations exposed by your flake, helps populate nixd settings, and validates package and option expressions.
• Reviewable flake updates: Input updates now have cancellable progress, refreshed revisions, clearer failure messages, and a before-and-after flake.lock diff.
• More reliable completion: Package and library suggestions refresh when relevant Nix files or lock files change, accounting for nested flakes, target systems, and configured package overlays.
• Faster symbol navigation: Project-wide symbol indexing makes finding definitions quicker, particularly in larger configuration repositories.
• Better error navigation: Follow source locations directly from Nix run-console errors, open derivation build logs, and enable full evaluation traces in run configurations.

The aim is to keep the workflow connected: configure the language server, edit your expressions, review dependency updates, and follow failures back to the relevant code.

For transparency, Nix Pro is a paid plugin.

JetBrains Marketplace

Happy to hear any feedback, suggestions, etc to make your Nix experience even better!

[Sorry for the re-post the video was not showing]

Favnyr is a lightweight file browser (Rust+Slint) for Windows and Linux. At its core are workspaces: separate environments that keep their own views, tabs, folders, layouts, and display settings. You could have one workspace for work, another for games, and another for learning a new subject, then switch between them in just two clicks. Favorites remain shared and persistent across all workspaces.

Each workspace can contain multiple split views and movable tabs. Tabs can be dragged between views, detached, or dropped onto another view to create a new split layout.

Favnyr also includes shortcuts, local and network drives, configurable keyboard shortcuts, and custom commands.
It is not intended to compete with or replace the native file browsers provided by Windows and Linux, but to complement them with a different way of organizing and navigating files.

Because of the project’s complexity, AI has been used as a development assistant. However, every feature is reviewed and hand tested extensively before being considered complete.

A user contributed to add NixOS support. So enjoy

Link here (include a video demo) => https://github.com/GlitchAwakened/Favnyr

Hey, I'm just getting into learning how to write packages; unfortunately one of the ones I'm attempting to write has a configuration that I'm confused on how to package.

This package has a meson.build file, but during that process it attempts to install some npm packages. Naturally, nix doesn't allow this. I've attempted to add an `npmDeps` field, which does seem to pull the packages, but that doesn't seem to fix the issue where the meson build itself seems to require a network.

Is this a behavior that's handled in other packages? Do I need to patch the meson build so that it skips the npm install and point it to the modules downloaded by nix? I'm not sure where to go from here, and I'd love some pointers on what the normal conventions for dealing with this might be.

The build itself seems to use ninja, so if I'm understanding the docs correctly I don't think I can just use buildNpmPackage

Thanks in advance!

who approved this

Apologies if this is against the subreddit rules. I can seemingly figure out how to use the Nix language at least a little, but I can't figure out how to navigate Reddit and find rules for posting in a subreddit lol.

I keep learning new things and making changes to my configuration. I have done this almost every day for the last 4 or so months. I am like 100 files deep, and there is still so much to learn. Nix is my first functional language, and it has made me more curious about other functional languages, which I will probably explore when I feel I have mastered Nix.

I do imagine there will be a day when this will come to an end, and the only changes to my config will be lockfile changes when I upgrade my system. Just today, I made a change to speed up local builds by allowing build systems to use multiple processor cores and am exploring using ccache to reuse object files and speed up builds even more (when I don't have a binary cache available).

Things I appreciate about NixOS that keep me here and likely will for a long time to come:

• Generally only having to solve problems once (though I did recently come across a bug that had occasionally happened since at least 2021 where invoking patchelf with --set-interpreter and --set-rpath together broke a binary, and the fix was to invoke it twice, once for each option).
• I was watching a video today where Ubuntu (a notoriously easy-to-use distribution) was giving someone problems with sleep on a gaming laptop. Depending on the cause, the fix on NixOS could potentially be as simple as adding this to their NVIDIA settings:

powerManagement.enable = true;

• Being able to roll back when you break things is huge. Being able to git clone a repo when you REALLY break things is even better.
• Having used distros like Arch, it was common for me to find a solution to something via Google, then forget what I did or how it worked. Using Nix, you kind of have to understand how it works first, and then you're writing everything into your config, which can be referenced later.

Those of you who have been on Nixos for years, did you eventually reach a point where you were satisfied with your configuration and rarely changed anything, or is tinkering with it just part of the NixOS experience?

Hello guys,

Can I just switch via rebuild to systemd boot or do I have to disable Grub first before?

Thanks

I've been using NixOS for a little over a year now.

I first came across it maybe 2 years ago and gave it a try, but setting everything up was way harder than I expected. I knew it would take a lot of time, and I wasn't really ready for that, so I just went back to Arch.

Then about a year later, after one magical Arch update that completely broke my system, I decided to give NixOS another shot.

(Not hating on Arch btw, I still really like it. I even recommended it to a friend who was new to Linux, and he's been using it for a few months now and loves it. Another friend who's been using Linux for years called me evil for recommending Arch to a beginner lol. But I still think it's pretty beginner-friendly, mostly thanks to the wiki, community, and pacman + yay.)

Anyway, after a year of using NixOS daily, I can say I really love it. Now I'm running it on my PC, laptop, and home server.

A few days ago, a friend asked me to share my config because he wanted to try NixOS himself. I took a look at my repo and realized it was a mess. A working mess, sure, but definitely not something I'd give to someone new to NixOS.

So I spent the last few days cleaning things up and refactoring stuff I'd been putting off for a while.

Anyway, here's what I ended up with:
https://github.com/evgen2571/my-nixos

Currently using Niri + Noctalia, although I recently came across Umbriel and might give it a try soon.

Hi! I have just started exploring what nix can do, and I threw together my first flake/module/whatever.

Problems I am trying to address

When we update a flake we get the current state of the inputs. This is great, but I am a paranoid sort of gremlin. I worry about regressions and supply chain attacks. I don't want to get the bleeding edge, and potentially get something nasty. Frankly, I want someone else to find it first and tell me about it. Thus: slowflakes

How I try to address these problems

Confession, I am not a smart gremlin. But I do try endeavor to recognize smart ideas from others. We don't want the bleeding edge right? What if we just impose an intentional delay in our process so that that edge can dull a bit with time. This has been done before:

• OpenSUSE Tumbleweed has Slowroll
• There is even a solution for nix already implemented, the clever folks at Determinate Systems have published a whole time delay flake for nixpkgs: DeterminateSystems/nixpkgs-weekly

These are awesome solutions. But not enough for me because:

1. I am using nixos, so sorry slow roll.
2. I have more inputs than just nixpkgs (home manager, lanzaboote, etc)
3. While the folks at Determinate Systems seem clever and honest, I thought it odd that I was trying to mitigate supply chain issues by adding another party & step to that chain.

So I just said, 'fluff it!', and tried to build my own.

As I said before, I am only just now learning Nix. And my bash script is terrible. I leaned heavily on google's gemini product with this project.

For all you wizards who know nix, I welcome suggestions.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU BLINDLY USE THIS IN YOUR SYSTEM, AT LEAST NOT YET.

Hello guys. i just installed nixOS alongside arch linux on the same ESP, on systemd-boot. And whenever i try to boot nixOS generation 2 or one, cuz it gives me the option in teh boot picker in systemd-boot. it loads normally, having a failed verbose text of some user switcher thing, but says then loading graphical interface, and just gets stuck at a blinking cursor. Can anyone help me really quickly plsss?!!

New to NixOS. I was just wondering if there is some form of checklist for what actions to take or what to look out for in the wake of what has been happening in the Cybersec world these last few days... I've got my config pointing to unstable already and did a full flake and home manager update yesterday, but apparently not all patches are live on all default upstream versions of deps (e.g. Brave Browser, Bun, among others).

It is my personal machine, so no app servers running on it or anything, but I do some app development work and use OpenCode sometimes... with that in mind what do y'all recommend? Or should I just wait until the patches are default upstream?

Thanks to my sponsor nixbuild.net, one month ago I have been to NixCon 2026 along with five hundred and fifty something other fabulous Nixers. Sorry for taking so long. This is NixCon 2026, day one.

Full Time Nix | NixCon 2026 Day Ⅰ

im use NixOS for 57 days and i need to move on right now.

i will switch back to gentoo

i'd like to say to yall that i loved yall and I will comebck soon!

im still think "i switch or just stay"

Will i pronounce later, bye!

I use NixOS and I’m wondering if there are any pre-made themes for QuickShell that look like the ones found in GNOME—something different from, say, Waybar. I hope someone understands what I mean.

I usually use podman, but for some reason ddev on NixOS doesn't work with that. With docker it is all working fine. Is this a general limitation of the ddev package on NixOS or do I have to configure something differently?

I realized that, after my latest push, I haven’t done a tree check of my files in a while and…holy files, Batman.

.dotfiles
├── flake.lock
├── flake.nix
├── home-manager
│   ├── aliases.nix
│   ├── cavalier.nix
│   ├── discord-nixcord.nix
│   ├── fastfetch
│    │   ├── config.jsonc
│    │   └── default.nix
│   ├── fetch.nix
│   ├── fish.nix
│   ├── git.nix
│   ├── glava.nix
│   ├── home.nix
│   ├── kate.nix
│   ├── konsole.nix
│   ├── nix-index.nix
│   ├── plasma.nix
│   ├── proton-dpi.nix
│   ├── superfile
│    │   ├── config.toml
│    │   ├── default.nix
│    │   └── hotkeys.toml
│   ├── tauon
│    │   ├── custom_layouts.json
│    │   ├── default.nix
│    │   └── themes
│    │       ├── Carbon Copy Copy.ttheme
│    │       └── Carbon Copy.ttheme
│   ├── wallpaper-colors.nix
│   ├── wallpaper.nix
│   └── xdgUserDirs.nix
├── hosts
│   ├── desktop
│    │   ├── dualboot.nix
│    │   ├── gpu.nix
│    │   ├── hardware-configuration.nix
│    │   └── locale.nix
│   └── nixos-stable
│       ├── dualboot.nix
│       ├── gpu.nix
│       ├── hardware-configuration.nix
│       └── locale.nix
├── installer
│   ├── base-configuration.nix
│   ├── disk-layout.nix
│   ├── nixed-install.sh
│   └── stage2.sh
├── INSTALL.md
├── limine-pins.json
├── modules
│   ├── assets
│   │   ├── boot_wallpaper.png
│   │   ├── logo.png
│   │   └── plymouth
│   │       ├── dotted
│   │        │   └── dotted.mp4
│   │       └── plymouth-theme.script
│   ├── bootloader.nix
│   ├── bootstrap.nix
│   ├── chaotic.nix
│   ├── configuration.nix
│   ├── de.nix
│   ├── flatpak.nix
│   ├── hosts.nix
│   ├── installer.nix
│   ├── iphone-music.nix
│   ├── kernel.nix
│   ├── krohnkite.nix
│   ├── librewolf.nix
│   ├── limine-gardener.nix
│   ├── limine-pins.json
│   ├── multiverse.nix
│   ├── nix-caches.nix
│   ├── nvidia.nix
│   ├── packages.nix
│   ├── steam.nix
│   ├── tailscale.nix
│   ├── vm.nix
│   └── zram.nix
├── nixd.json
├── README.md
├── scripts
│   ├── iphone-music-sync.sh
│   └── kernel-versions.sh
└── statix.toml
15 directories, 72 files, 20.9MiB

https://determinate.systems/blog/emergency-legacy-extension-for-nixos-25-05/

We've scrambled to provide an emergency legacy extension to NixOS 25.05 for folks that are stuck and looking for a solution.

I have moved toward GNU Guix with nonguix. It was always something that I wanted to try, and move to full GNU (I am quite a little GNU Enthusiast). Before that I was using Nix. Guix's implementation of declarative dotfiles is quite remarkably simple. Either have a plain dotfiles structure or a stow layout for your dotfiles. And they get symlinked from the store. Wow! I mean, wow. I know it's not as simple as it sounds, since a lot of stuff (in my experience a few stuff) require many paths resolved. But I was able to achieve that in Guix, and I believe that it can be done on NixOS as well, through /run/current-system/<the whole stuff here, iykyk>. I remember reading a blog on Nix. Someone did that using home-manager's file linking abilities. But it was stateless, which did serve its purpose (I don't remember the link, but I'll post it when I pass by it another time). That blog used home-manage's mkOutOfStoreSymlink function. It was a cool function. I also happened to come by another project (again a long time ago, but I don't remember it though) that used a stow layout (a complete home-manager replacement) that used stateful linking from the nix store, using a stow layout. I think that nix can implement something like that and avoid the heavy load and eval time of lib.evalModule function.

Wrapper libraries that don't have to call lib.evalModule at all, are also cool. One such is the adios-wrappers library. But I haven't really used it long-time, since I switched to GNU Guix.