Resources

Note: Reference documentation and learning materials for using Nix standalone are maintained at nix.dev.

This article is an overview of resources available both within the NixOS Wiki and elsewhere. For communication channels, support and information of contributing, see the community menu.

Searching by topic

While most people just search for the article they want to read, there is also a way to reach almost all arcticles via 2 to 3 clicks from the starting page via the main 5 topic categories:

1. Software
2. Hardware
3. Desktop - how to setup PCs
4. Server - how to setup servers
5. Community - people, communication, work on NixOS

Searching by article type

The NixOS Wiki's core articles are divided into five type categories. Each category link will list all pages in that category:

1. Pedias, for encyclopedic description
2. Guides, for broad hands-on understanding and connections to other learning resources
3. Tutorials, intended to teach a particular process or project
4. Cookbooks, collections of tips and tricks
5. Reference, full manuals and technical coverage

Pages are also organized by the six most prominent components of the Nix Ecosystem — NixOS, Nix: the package manager, Nix: the language (Nix Expressions), Nixpkgs, NixOps and Hydra.

NixOS Wiki Resources
Category	NixOS	Nix	Nix Expressions	Nixpkgs	NixOps	Hydra
Pedia	NixOS	Nix	Nix Expression Language	Nixpkgs	NixOps	Hydra
Cookbook	NixOS Cheatsheet	Nix Cookbook	Nix Language: Tips & Tricks
NixOS Official Resources
Category	NixOS	Nix	Nix Expressions	Nixpkgs	NixOps	Hydra
Reference	NixOS Manual	Nix Manual	Nix Manual: Writing Nix Expressions	Nixpkgs Manual	Nixops Manual	Hydra Manual

Note: Home Manager is also a major community project to make user environment management in NixOS easier. It is intended to replace much of what you would do with nix-env, to reduce hard-to-track imperative actions.
Official Home Manager manual

Also, see Applications for an overview of tools in the extended ecosystem.

More documentation

• awesome-nix - community-curated list of Nix learning resources and tools
• Nixpkgs/Manuals - Links to all the manuals.

News

• planet.nixos.org - Aggregator for blogs related to nix/nixOS
• NixOS Discourse - Official forum
• nixpkgs.news - news feed for nixpkgs, Inactive since July 7 2024

Interactive websites

• NixOS Packages Search - full-text search through all packages of NixOS
• NixOS Option Search - full-text search through all options of NixOS
• Home Manager Option Search - full-text search through all options of home-manager
• Noogle - Nix API search engine that lets you search nix functions
• A tour of nix - interactive Nix tutorial
• Nix Channel Status - when nixpkgs/nixos channels were updated last
• Hydra - official Nixpkgs CI/CD
• Nix Review Tools Reports - reports showing problematic dependencies for major Hydra jobsets

- mynixos - full-text search through packages in nixpkgs and all options of NixOS, home-manager, nix-darwin

Tutorials

• How to learn Nix - A set of over 40 posts from 2021, looking at — as the author describes — not just what Nix does, but what it does. It is their notes from reading the manual, doing experiments, and trying to deeply understand Nix.
• Tutorial Introduction to Nix - An introduction focused on the use of shell environments, for Python and with links to R versions as well
• Interactive Tour of Nix - An interactive tutorial of the Nix Expression Language by Joachim Schiele and Paul Seitz
• Nix shell workshop
• Scrive workshop - Nix language and packaging workshop
• Wombat's Book of Nix - A book on Nix language and flakes for newcomers
• NixOS & Flakes Book - An unofficial book for beginners - A beginner friendly tutorial about NixOS and Flakes. By Ryan Yin
• NixOS in Production - A NixOS handbook for professional use. By Gabriella Gonzalez
• nix-1p - A (more or less) one page introduction to Nix, the language.

Video tutorials

• Wil T Nix Guides - A video series in 8 parts, covering the Nix ecosystem from foundations, providing orientation with all available resources, and showing hands on how to get NixOS installed and running (including managing all your configuration through git and using Flakes).
• Nix Friday - a series of 24 video streams of 1-2 hours on learning Nix and meeting community members
• The Nix Hour - A weekly beginner-oriented improvised QA-style lecture on Nix
• Vimjoyer's Nix Tutorials - A regularly released tutorial series about configuring things with Nix.
• NixOS Config Guides for Nerds and Other Cool People - A tutorial series geared towards people that have some Linux command line experience.
• Nixology - A tutorial series by Burke Libbey, originally released internally at Shopify
• Informal intro to the Nix language, derivations and nixpkgs - A thorough introduction to the Nix language
• EmergentMind's Nix Tutorials - A tutorial series for Nix configuration and secrets management

Examples

• Configuration Collection
• Comparison of NixOS setups

Talks

NixCon

• NixCon 2023 Talks
• NixCon 2022 Talks
• NixCon 2020 Talks
• NixCon 2019 Talks
• NixCon 2018 Talks
• NixCon 2017 Talks
• NixCon 2015 Talks produced and hosted by the CCC Video Operation Center

Other

• FOSDEM 2024 - Nix and NixOS devroom
• Summer of Nix 2023 Talks
• FOSDEM 2023 - Nix and NixOS devroom
• Summer of Nix 2022 Talks
• ZFS NAS