NixOS as a desktop/zh

NixOS可以用於許多目的. 如果你想把它用作你的日常主要桌面作業系統(在實體機上或者作為副虛擬機), 那麼你應該看看這個頁面. 即使你是想把NixOS用在雲端或者是經過特殊配置的伺服器上, 你也可能會想從這裡概述的課程開始, 以便從整體上對Nix生態有更好的了解.

安裝

Wiki(維基百科)上的方法

如果你傾向於閱讀, 請從NixOS安裝指南開始. 如果你想選擇一個精良的視頻教程, 請見下一條. 請記住, 為了安裝一個桌面, 你需要確定一開始有至少30GiB的可用硬碟空間來容納桌面環境(比如說, GNOME, KDE, 或者是XFCE), 瀏覽器(比如Firefox), 以及其他帶有圖形界面的典型日用軟體(如VSCode). 對於相對簡陋的配置, 15GiB可能夠用.

Video guide

For a visual guide, see Wil T Nix Guides. The second video is a concise installation guide. This 8-part series, produced in early 2021, also covers all the basics of using NixOS as a desktop and configuring it to your liking.

Managing your configuration

It is possible to manage your entire configuration using the methods documented in the NixOS official manual. However, most community members who use NixOS on the desktop prefer to manage their user configurations (e.g. "dotfiles") using Home Manager (citation needed). Home Manager is a user oriented tool for declaring what you want installed and how you want it configured, and thus would be used in lieu of most settings you would otherwise put into a configuration.nix or through nix-env

Video guide

Wil T's guides are about an even mix of:

1. Hands-on bootstrapping to get to being able to very capably manage your system using Home Manager, git versioning, and eventually Flakes.
2. Conceptual overviews and general exposition of the Nix ecosystem, community, and available resources.

The second video, starting from about 27 minutes in, is also an introduction to and guide to setting up Home Manager.

Modularizing your configuration

With NixOS Modules

configuration.nix is an instance of a NixOS module, which makes it easy to break your configuration into several files. Modules can:

• Import other modules
• Declare new options
• Provide values for options (this is what most of your default configuration.nix does)
• Reference option values from other modules (via the config attribute passed to all modules)

As long as you declare options for any values you want to share between modules, you can divide your configuration however you like into files that get imported, directly or transitively, by your root configuration.nix file. You can also import modules from remote sources, using functions like builtins.fetchTarball. See the wiki page or the NixOS manual for more information.

With Flakes

If you want a more composable^{[citation needed]} NixOS configuration setup, the still-experimental Flakes feature is causing a lot of excitement in the community. Managing flakes requires a good basic understanding and some existing hands on experience with the Nix ecosystem.

Video guide

Videos seven and eight of Wil T's original 8-part series are a good overview of what Flakes enable and how to get started with them.

Beyond initial setup

After you are familiar with the Nix ecosystem and have a functional desktop install of NixOS, you will likely be interested in customizations and more detailed setup.

Learn by example

If you are comfortable managing your system through a git repo using flakes, then there are many repositories you can learn from now!

Check out Comparison of NixOS setups for a table comparing some popular choices.

See Configuration Collection for a long list within the wiki.

Additionally, the following topic searches on Github should uncover many useful examples.

• nix-flake
• nixos-configuration
• nixos-dotfiles