nextOS

This is a work-in-progress NixOS configuration.

Installation

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/smnast/nextos

2. Change directory

cd nextos

3. Run the install script

./utils/install.sh <HOSTNAME>

4. Profit

Setup

1. For each git user, run

./utils/git_user.sh

2. Copy the public key to your git platforms

3. In the nextOS repository (i.e. probably /etc/nixos), run

./utils/git_repo.sh

to set the repository to the correct (SSH) remote URL.

3. Profit

Technical Description

The configuration is designed with two core principles in mind:

1. Make it easy to create new hosts and users
2. Keep each user's configuration simple

To accomplish this, every application, program, service, etc. is installed via a module, and all modules are trivially accessible by all hosts and users.

For instance, enabling firefox is as simple as

{
  modules.firefox.enable = true;
}

Maybe a host wants obs for the system? Instead of searching for if it should be programs.obs.enable = true or environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.obs ], nextOS keeps it simple:

{
  modules.obs.enable = true;
}

For per-user configuration, programs are accessible through homeModules:

{
  homeModules.gammastep.enable = true;
}

Thus, there are two sets of modules:

1. "Home Modules" available through homeModules, which are installed through home-manager and should be placed in a user's home.nix file
2. "Modules" available through modules, which are installed system-wide through NixOS configuration and should be in a host's configuration.nix file.

Note that most home modules are currently designed to work for my setup, and do not support as much customization as NixOS modules. For example, enabling zsh through homeModules.zsh.enable = true will enable my p10k theme, keybinds, etc. This may be improved in the future.

There are 4 key files for each configuration:

1. configuration.nix manages the system-wide configuration per host, including all modules and other global config (that sit temporarily in this file until moved properly into modules).
2. disko.nix declaratively defines the partitioning and formatting steps during installation. It's rarely necessary to do more than a small tweak of the sample configuration.
3. user.nix this file should contain any NixOS configuration that is specific to the user, such as initial password and groups.
4. home.nix defines all home-manager configuration for the user.

That's it. For example, to define an entirely new host

1. Add a new directory to hosts
2. Add a configuration.nix file and configuration the system through modules
3. Add a disko.nix file to define the partitioning and formatting steps
4. Add a users directory with user configuration

To create a new user

1. Add a new directory to users
2. Add a user.nix file and define the user in NixOS configuration
3. Add a home.nix file and configuration the user through homeModules

I wasn't kidding about the core principles. How do I do this? With flake.nix. Other than sourcing flakes in the inputs attribute set, the system flake iterates through all the folders in hosts and makes a NixOS configuration for each one. Within each host, the flake iterates through all users in the users directory and creates a new user for each. All the ugly importing is done here to keep the actual configuration as simple as possible.

Finally, the install.sh script automates the remaining manual processes with a simple shell script. It runs the disko.nix configuration, creates necessary folders, copies over the nextOS files and automagically creates a hardware-configuration.nix, which, of course, is automagically imported in flake.nix.