my nixos configuration

Disclaimer

You may find complex nixos configurations on the Internet. I try to keep mine simple for 2 reasons:

• I still do not know what I am doing with nix 😜
• My use case is simple: I want to be able to setup a new machine as quick as possible on hardware crash.

Strategy

home-manager is of course used to deal with user dot files. However, as it also enables to install software on a per-user basis, I found this approach useful for me: I can add a user for a family member or friend with a controlled list of apps. For example, my sons do not care (yet) about programming. Why then exposing them a useless code editor?

Implementation

• Modules located in ./modules/home are home-manager ones.
• Modules located in ./modules/system are system-wide nixos ones.
• Modules located in ./hardware/scanned are a verbatim copy of hardware scan during nixos installation.
• Modules located in ./hardware are the ones configuring the hardware (bootloader, audio, etc...)

Development

• To rebuild and switch to the new generation: sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#default (rebooting will be changes)
• To rebuild and test live: sudo nixos-rebuild test --flake .#default (rebooting will discard changes)
• To test in a virtual machine: ./test-vm.sh

On crash

• run the nixos installer on the <new-machine> (create your account, peio in my case)
• import your SSH and GPG keys (known by github)
• git clone this repository
• copy /etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix (generated by the nixos installer) to <repo>/hardware/scanned/machines/<new-machine>.nix
• change flake.nix entries to use the <new-machine> (such as:machine = "framework13";)
• sudo nixos-rebuild test --flake .#default