The Nix language is designed for conveniently creating and composing derivations – precise descriptions of how contents of existing files are used to derive new files. It is a domain-specific, purely functional, lazily evaluated, dynamically typed programming language.

You may quickly encounter Nix language expressions that look very complicated. As with any programming language, the required amount of Nix language code closely matches the complexity of the problem it is supposed to solve, and reflects how well the problem – and its solution – is understood. Building software is a complex undertaking, and Nix both exposes and allows managing this complexity with the Nix language.

Yet, the Nix language itself has only few basic concepts that will be introduced in this tutorial, and which can be combined arbitrarily. What may look complicated comes not from the language, but from how it is used.

Overview

This is an introduction to reading the Nix language, for the purpose of following other tutorials and examples.

Using the Nix language in practice entails multiple things:

• Language: syntax and semantics
• Libraries: builtins and pkgs.lib
• Developer tools: testing, debugging, linting, formatting, …
• Generic build mechanisms: stdenv.mkDerivation, trivial builders, …
• Composition and configuration mechanisms: override, overrideAttrs, overlays, callPackage, …
• Ecosystem-specific packaging mechanisms: buildGoModule, buildPythonApplication, …
• NixOS module system: config, option, …

This tutorial only covers the most important language features, briefly discusses libraries, and at the end will direct you to reference material and resources on the other components.

The Pain of NixOS Beginners - Documentation and Flakes

NixOS is a highly distinctive Linux distribution built upon the Nix package manager, with a design philosophy that sets it apart from traditional distributions like Ubuntu, CentOS, Arch Linux and others.

One of NixOS's major advantages over other distributions lies in its reproducibility and declarative configuration, allowing users to replicate consistent system environments across multiple machines.

While NixOS is powerful, its strength also comes with increased system complexity. This makes it more challenging for newcomers. One major challenge is that the knowledge accumulated on other Linux distributions is not easily transferable to NixOS. Another is that official and community documentation is often scattered and outdated. These issues have troubled many NixOS beginners.

One can observe these issues with the experimental feature of the Nix package manager called Flakes. Inspired by package managers like npm and Cargo, Flakes uses flake.nix to record all external dependencies and flake.lock to lock their versions. This significantly enhances the reproducibility and composability of the Nix package manager and NixOS configurations.

Flakes' advantages have made it widely popular within the community: according to official surveys, over half of the new Nix repositories created on GitHub now utilize Flakes.

However, to maintain stability, the official documentation covers barely any Flakes-related content. This has left many Nix/NixOS users feeling confused. They see everyone using Flakes and want to learn it too, but find nowhere to start, often having to piece together scattered information, search through Nixpkgs source code, or seek help from more experienced users.

If your machine doesn't currently have an operating system installed, you can still run nixos-anywhere remotely to automate the install. To do this, you would first need to boot the target machine from the standard NixOS installer. You can either boot from a USB or use netboot.

The NixOS installation guide has detailed instructions on how to boot the installer.

When you run nixos-anywhere, it will determine whether a NixOS installer is present by checking whether the /etc/os-release file contains the identifier VARIANT_ID=installer. This identifier is available on releases NixOS 23.05 or later.

If an installer is detected, nixos-anywhere will not attempt to kexec into its own image. This is particularly useful for targets that don't have enough RAM for kexec or don't support kexec.

NixOS starts an SSH server on the installer by default, but you need to set a password in order to access it.

In dieser Artikelserie stellen wir die Linux-Distribution NixOS vor. Im ersten Teil geht es um die grundlegenden Konzepte des Betriebssystems.

• NixOS Teil 1 - Ein deklaratives Betriebssystem
• NixOS Teil 2 - Installation und Konfigurationsdatei
• NixOS Teil 3 - Paketmanagement
• NixOS Teil 4 - Persönliche Erfahrungen und Empfehlungen

This manual describes how to install, use and extend NixOS, a Linux distribution based on the purely functional package management system Nix, that is composed using modules and packages defined in the Nixpkgs project.

Additional information regarding the Nix package manager and the Nixpkgs project can be found in respectively the Nix manual and the Nixpkgs manual.

If you encounter problems, please report them on the Discourse, the Matrix room, or on the #nixos channel on Libera.Chat. Alternatively, consider contributing to this manual. Bugs should be reported in NixOS’ GitHub issue tracker.

NixOS is a Linux distribution where everything is described as code, with one exception: during installation, the disk partitioning and formatting are manual steps. disko aims to correct this sad 🤡 omission.

This is especially useful for unattended installations, re-installation after a system crash or for setting up more than one identical server.

Setting up a new machine is time-consuming, and becomes complicated when it needs to be done remotely. If you're installing NixOS, the nixos-anywhere tool allows you to pre-configure the whole process including:

• Disk partitioning and formatting
• Configuring and installing NixOS
• Installing additional files and software

You can then initiate an unattended installation with a single CLI command. Since nixos-anywhere can access the new machine using SSH, it's ideal for remote installations.

Once you have initiated the command, there is no need to 'babysit' the installation. It all happens automatically.

You can use the stored configuration to repeat the same installation if you need to.

• Table of Content: - nixos-anywhere - Install NixOS everywhere via ssh

Die Installation von NixOS ähnelt der von Arch Linux. Daher sollten Personen, die schon einmal Arch Linux installiert haben, keine grösseren Probleme damit haben. Ich zeige hier alle Befehle, welche ich für die Installation verwendet habe. Die Installation verwendet eine LUKS Verschlüsselung mit LVM und UEFI.