NixOS Setup Guide - Configuration / Home-Manager / Flakes

hello everyone my name is matthias i've been  fairly interested in nix and nixos for a while now   now i don't claim to be an expert in the topic  but i believe i have enough knowledge to help   some of you out so this video is mainly targeted  to the people who already have some experience   with linux and are interested in getting  started with nixos so it's not really targeted   to enterprise level users or advanced users now  what i noticed is that people who are new to nixos   have a lot of issues with documentation or the  initial setup of their system configuration now   there is a lot of documentation like wikis, just  the normal nixos website and that's plenty enough   information but it's very hard for new people to  know what to do with these code snippets or how to   enable these things within their setup  so in this mini course i would like to   help demystify the whole process of building a  configuration for your own home personal computer   so there are a few topics i want to  discuss in this course first of all nixos   in general so how to set it up the configuration  file um how to install and declare packages   then afterwards i also want to see home  manager this is an extra way to configure your   system on a user level and it gives you a lot  more powerful tools to actually declare the   whole system and then lastly i also would like  to see flakes and in flakes we're going to set up   our whole system and we can even set up  multiple systems and we can then work with   nixos the default configuration  file and home manager as well within   a single flake and in the end i might even  show my own personal configuration for a while   so you all have a baseline or a good idea of  what you can add to your personal configuration   there are also a few sources that i will be  using or referring to now all these sources   will be added in the description below and  i might open them on video here as well   okay let's get started with nixos itself so what  is nixos well it is a linux distribution based on   the nix package manager and it supports  declarative reproducible system configurations   what does that mean because i think some  of you might not even know what that means   well to explain it very easily nixos when we build  a system will generate a configuration file and   within the configuration file it states every  aspect of your system so if we need bluetooth   it is written down in that document if we use a  specific window manager or desktop environment   these things are all declared within the document  so every time we rebuild our system with nixos   it will have the same packages  installed always in the same way   so that's something very useful with nixos another  point well that is fairly popular with nixos is   that they say it's unbreakable now of course every  system can be breakable if you really try but   why do we tell it it's breakable well every time  we rebuild our system so every time we for example   install an extra package it generates a new  configuration generation so every single time   we get a new file where everything is declared  and from the boot menu so for example crop   we can select different generations so if we  make a mistake in one of our latest edits in the   system and the system won't boot correctly what  we can do is we can say okay we want to boot into   a specific generation of the system and then  we can afterwards go tweak the file again   and rebuild the system so it works and even if  these older generations are also having issues   we can always just go in the tty and then edit  the files from there and try to rebuild so you   don't have to tinker with 50 million different  documents everywhere spread around the system   that's not something we really do everything  can be configured within configuration.nix file now nixos is a bit different than other linux  distributions and that's because nixos uses the   nix store and in the nix store pretty much  everything about the system is stored actually   so we don't really have a lib or  usr lib file we have like a bin   and usr bin file so i'll quickly show you so there isn't really a lib file here in our root  directory but as a bin file and within bin there's   only one file and in this case it's only sh  and it's a sim link probably to next store   so that's just so i believe  scripts can work actually   and then on the user we also have a bin file but  also there there's not not really a lot there   everything is stored within the nix store so here  is nick's store and this is going to take a while   to load because there are a lot of files  here so i'll just leave it open for now   and let it load then lastly also something  i use not too often but it's pretty useful   is nix-env so i presume it stands for next  environment and what that does it's a command   that we can use to install packages so we can  install packages using all configuration file   but we can also use nix environment  in this case to install packages   not on a system level but as their own separate  thing so that's something very useful to do   because you won't have to change anything on  the system itself a good example for example is   g parted that's something i use like once a  year maybe once every few months so that's not a   package i need constantly on my computer so what  i do is i just install it with nix environment   nothing really changes these files are stored in  the nix store file and it doesn't really change   my system i can always boot into that package  without any issues and after i'm done with it   i can remove it and that's the neat thing about  nix os and in general if i have two different   packages so let's say here in next store if i have  two different packages they will get their own   bin file and then if needed their own lib file  so if two packages have the same dependencies   they will get their own version of  it because let's say we have these   two packages in another distribution and they  say okay i have that that dependency already   i will use it for both packages that's fine  until one of these packages get updated and   the dependencies also get updated but the other  package we have so that second package doesn't   need a newer version and everything breaks within  that package because it uses another version well   that's kind of an issue so within next we have or  i'll just open a random one here hopefully yeah   so in this case i'm not sure what it is but it has  its own lib file with the the needed files inside   but that's kind of how nixos and nix the nix store  works in this case so i'll just close that for now okay let's get started then i think most of you  have already seen the nixos website i'll just   bring it over here you'll probably have visited it  already before my video now we are going to go to   downloads because we want to actually download  the iso file in this case now under downloads   there are two options there's nix and nixos so  nix is the package manager we don't really need   to install it because it comes with nixos so  let's go here we are currently on version 21.1 and here we can find the iso files so for this  course i am going to use the plasma desktop just   to make it easier for everyone to have an actual  graphical environment so this is the live cd we   are going to use if you want to test out nixos  on a virtual machine you can use virtualbox the   iso for that but personally i always use any  of these they work fine without any issues now something that may be useful  if you don't want to follow my   video is the manual that can be found under more  so this is the manual it explains a lot of things   but we are mostly going to look  at the first four points here and then there's also another option on Linux   os website and that's these older  releases so when i click on also available   here i can go for unstable so that's something  very useful because i personally prefer a   rolling release distribution so with the unstable  version that's kind of what we get in this case   so if we scrolled all the way down  here i have like one of the latest   unstable versions already downloaded so i  don't really have to download that in this case okay so let's install it in full on virtual  manager so let's move this out of the way   so if you're already going to install  it for on your usb stick of course i'm   not really going to go in detail for that  but just use something like balena etcher   to get it on a n usb stick and you can just boot  into it with like escape or delete or f9 through   f10 on your computer to boot into the  live cd now i'm going to use my manager   and i've already set it up pretty much so  i'm going to begin the installation there   we go so this is the boot menu we're  just going to choose the first option   and let me move this over to my other workspace there we go now this is going to take a while  something useful to know is that these isos they   come without a password so this will automatically  log into kde if you're inactive for too long   it will log you out but you can just press enter  and you will automatically be logged in again   it's the same for getting root privileges you  can just open the terminal and with sudo su   in this case you can easily get root privileges  without having the need of a password so let's   do that now and i'll show you so sudo su there  we go and it's always good to be as root in what   we're going to do now afterwards so you should  always be in root okay let's minimize this oh yeah something maybe i forgot if  you want to change your keyboard layout   i think most of you will  already know but for the minimal   iso it's loadkeys and then your keyboard layout  i'm going to use setxkbmap and change it to my   keyboard layout because otherwise i'm  going to have some issues there we go okay then to partitioning partitioning can be done in  two ways so a graphical environment and just via   the terminal personally i don't really use gparted  you can if you want to i'm going to skim over it   very quickly so first we need to create a  partition table from here you can choose what   type it needs to be the partition table if you're  going to use legacy boot use ms-dos if you're   going to be using uefi boot use gpt if you're  not sure what either of these are just quickly   explained ms-dos it's pretty much if you have  like an older computer it's only one partition   you don't you're not going to dual boot just use  ms-dos if you have like a computer that boots into   like an hard drive that's like bigger than two  terabytes or something you better choose gpt and   also if you're going to dual boot with windows  also choose gpt since this is a virtual machine   i'm just going to use ms-dos in this case i think  you can also just use legacy boot if you have like   if you dual boot with other linux distributions  so that won't be an issue so apply and then from   here we can add the partitioning you can choose  whatever you want if you need a swap file you can   add that as well i'm not going to do this because  this virtual machine only has like 30 gigabytes   but yeah so the file system i'm going to use  ext4 and it something you don't need to forget   is add a label to these partitions and  this is going to be very useful in a minute   to use these labels because otherwise we will  have to use the uuid and that's a bit harder   to actually type into terminal so let's give this  label nixus at turn apply and we're done with that   so that's our partitioning done in this case of  course have a look at your own system what you   prefer what you like and then you can set it up  your way of course this is pretty much standard   and the same for any this linux distribution  now if you want to do it via the console let's do that again here we go so parted def i've written down sda  but since i'm using virt manager i need to say vda and then here again we choose ms-dos or  gpt so that's what you have to choose   on your own then it will format yes okay  then again parted def vda mk part primary   and then here we are going to say okay what  is our primary partition going to be for me   it will be just one maybe byte to 100  but of course in this example here   so you can see i've selected one megabyte to  minus eight gigabytes so that means that the   partition will be from the beginning to the end  and not get not using the last eight gigabytes   so that will be reserved for the swap  partition now you can choose whatever   you want here um if you want a bigger swap file  or a smaller swap file you can change that here   i might recommend that you use percentages  instead of actually like gigabytes or gibby bytes   and the reason is once you're going to actually  set up the the swap file here as a as a third   command it might scream at you and say okay this  eight gigabytes and this one are not the same so   they don't start at the same location so then it's  more useful if you use percentages because it will   always be correct so you'll have to then say  like okay my hard drive is like one terabyte   subtract like the eight gigabytes that's like one  point two percent or whatever and we can just say   minus one point two percent and then it won't  give these problems now if you're using uefi   we don't start with one maybe byte we start with  512 that's because that's what's needed for the   boot partition for uefi so that's something you  need to change if you're using uefi so let's do   this i don't have the swap so i'm not going to use  this command but if you do don't forget to do this   for people who have uefi we also need  to state okay one of the partitions   is fat32 for the put partition and that's  from one megabyte to 512 megabytes um   also this command and for me something  i do need to do and anyone else too is   mkfs.x104 so that's the file system type  let's give it a label and the label will   be nixos you can give it whatever label you  like and that will be vda one in my case   yes there we go i might enlarge this a bit because  i think it's maybe better visible done there we go and then for the swap if you have swap you  also need to say mk swap give it a label again   and then def sda or vda2 for uefi also you  also need to say okay um as the a3 will be   our boot and it's type fat32 and in this case  the label is not with like flag l but flag   n so yeah and i'll give it boot we don't  really need to do that because we have ms-dos then for mounting we say mount dev disk  and this is why i mentioned that you   well it's recommended that you use labels  because now we can say okay def disk by label   and my label was nix os and i can mount it to mnt  if you haven't added a label what you will need   to do is say okay def by uuid and i will have  to give the uuid and if you don't know the uuid   you can find this on gparted and i  think if you do like um lsblk f i think   yes so here we have like the uuid and that's  the same let me just unlock this a bit um there that's the same with cheap audit over here   with the information so here we have the uuid  so if you forgot this is where you can find it let's go back if you're using uefi the boot  partition also needs to be mounted   and we're going to do that by saying okay mkd  so make a directory p and say mnt and then   wherever you want to mount this in this case  it's maybe a good practice to say okay boot to add or mount the boot partition and you can  you can just say okay mount def disk by label boot and then mnt slash boot so yeah if you have also swap and  your computer is quite slow   it's maybe useful to also enable the swap  already just for the installation itself so   if you don't have a lot of ram that's maybe  recommended if you also have other drives   let's say you have a second ssd that you want to  mount that's also possible you can do the same   as what we did with your uefi in this case so we  can make a directory mkdir for example p slash mnt   slash ssd for example if you want to mount your  ssd there just do the same and again mount by   label or uuid and why would you want to do that  in advance well what we're going to do now is generate our default configuration so if i  say nixos generate config root mnt so we're   going to generate a configuration file from for  mnt in location mnt um as you can see here cd   mnt that's not really anything in here only  the loss plus found but if we run this command it now writes two documents in mnt so as you can see now we have etsy  and within at c another directory cd   nixos and here we can find our two files so we  have a file and a hardware configuration.nix file   so within config configuration.nix we're  going to set up and declare the whole system   and hardware configuration.nix you don't really  have to change this i will have a look at it   and change a few things in in this initial setup  but you don't really have to look at it actually   most of the things that are being changed or  for enabling the system and setting it all up   are done within configuration.nix so  let's open that file and there we go and we'll go over the whole file quickly  because it's a lot of a lot of points   so first of all everything well behind a  hashtag i think is a comment so you can   safely ignore this this is all documentation um  everything without the hashtag is actual code for   the system so first thing here is this  config config and packages so these are all   arguments that are used to evaluate the config for  example packages is a reference to next packages   so throughout the system it will look for packages  that we need to install in this case for example   grub is in here in this document so it will know  okay we need to install grub within the system   and configure it this way so that's why it is used  here these are the arguments that are used if you   if we're like in in a few minutes when we're going  to home manager if we need to use home energy to   evaluate the document you can for example add that  here so home manager and whatever if you have like   your own variables that need to be used within  the file you can also add these variables here in this case we don't have any so i'm not going  to add anything and then the three dots these   are everything else that is needed you can  see it as everything else that is needed   to fully configure the system this is not like  a wild card or anything but this is just so nix   knows okay how to configure everything else so you  can also ignore it a bit you don't really need to   change any of this if you're going very advanced  in your configuration then next up imports in this case we are going to import  of course hardware configuration   so the start of our system building is  within configuration.nix and we can import   other files so another file is in  this case hardware configuration   so everything within this file will also  get evaluated to build the system itself there we go next up boot so there are a few boot  options and i want to go over all of them because   some of you will use legacy boots and some  of you will use uefi now for legacy you will   have these two options already enabled or well  uncommented so boot.load.grub.enable equals true   and boot.loader.group.version2 equals 2. so that's  how we set up our grub so we enable it and we say   which version it is now how where are these things  coming from these settings well let's have a look   back at our website here so the nixos website  and if we go to the search option here at the top here we can find all the packages that are within  the next package manager so if i search for grub here we have grub so we know that's  something that we can install onto the system   now as i have shown like boot.loader.grub  enable where where is this this coming from well   there are not only packages but there are  also options and if we go to options we get   a lot of options for group itself so we can  change a lot of things so what is it here so   boot load or grub version so as you can see  we have a lot of information here of what   it actually is so by default it's two but  if we want one we can change this to one   and here's a bit of information about what the  specific versions are you can also just look that   up on the internet of course grip enable whether  we need it or not so by default it's always true   and as you can see we can also change other things  like the crop font if you want to add a team that   exists for example apparently within nix packages  there's a team called nixos corrupt to theme   and that's what we can for example state  if we add it to the configuration file   so let's move back to our configuration  file let's make this again a bit bigger   there we go and some things you will see when  you find other people's configuration is that   they won't use it like this or write it down like  this but what they will do is remove one of these   whoops there we go and they  will say okay we have grub we use an equal sign and squarely brackets   and then from here we can change everything  that is within grub so we had enable equals   to and then also version equals two so in this  case what this tells us is boot boot.loader.grub   dot enable equals true but it also tells me  boot.loader.grub dot version equals two so that's   how we can make it a bit easier so you don't  have to write these things multiple times you   can like put them between squarely brackets and  it will know that it's part of boot.loader.grub okay some other things so one thing for the legacy  boot users uncomment boot.loader.grub.device and i have to change this  because i am using verb manager   so it's not def slash sda it's def slash vda if you are dual booting like other  linux distributions also don't forget to   maybe use boot.loader.crop dot use os pro or  equals to through so what this does it will search   throughout the system and find any bootable  partitions and it will add it to grub itself   if you can if it doesn't find any entries you can  also just use boot.load.group.exe or extra entries   in this case i've added like a windows entry  this will not work with legacy boots so that's   a kind of a mistake by me but have a look at how  you can add manually extra entries because i'm   not going to explain this this is just general  documentation not something specific to nixos people use uefi you will get two these two options  so i maybe make this a bit bigger let's see what was it again no yeah whoops there we go so you will get these two lines of code  so boot.loader.systemd boot.enable and   boot.load.efi can touch efi variables true that's  the default you won't don't really need to change   anything here if you're just going to boot into  nixos all the time if you are going to use a   dual boot or multiple bootable drives  you can say okay bootloader equals efi we have bootloader dot efi and bootloader dot  crop so in this case we're going to use grub again   so that means if you're going to use grub  with dual boot you can delete this line of   code so we are not then going to use  system d boot so you can remove that and then of course some other things  you need to add so you can just copy   actually the all of this it  will just perfectly work fine   kento gfi variables yes so that's needed  where's the mount point for boot that's here   and something useful to know is we're not going  to use like here with boot.loader.group.device sda that's not something you do if you're  going to use uefi and dual boot   then we are going to state devices equals no def   and you can also again use you use os probe equals  true keep in mind with windows this will not work   the first time you rebuild the system so os pro  will not find your windows partition but don't   like go crazy about it the second time you use  it so when we rebuild the system afterwards   it will find the the windows partition okay lastly  some extras you can maybe add to your boot options   so first of all is kernel packages in this  case we state okay from packages so that's   from here so how we evaluate the whole  configuration from packages so next packages   there's a package that exists that's called  linux packages underscore latest so in this   case we will always get the latest kernel if  you want a specific kernel i believe you can   just change this to the latest kernel number but  you you'll have to look that up yourself on nexos   on the specific packages that exist what i also  do is add a kernel module for my graphics card   for nvidia you will have to look it up on your own  there is a wiki so on nixos.wiki that's probably   a page for nvidia on how to set all these things  up and then fold the boot loader so i can maybe   change that here as well what we can do is we can  limit our configuration files so as i said before   you can well nixos will work with generations  on specific every time you build a system   and if you don't want to store all the  different generations because it will probably   always store every generation and you don't want  it you can limit it to like a specific amount of   generations afterwards they get removed from from  grub itself so that's something useful to have   and the last thing is boot dot loader dot timeout  and this will work for crop and for systemd boot   we can set up a timeout so you can set this  to whatever you want i think by default it's   10 but you can change this to like five or  zero one and then it will boot automatically   quicker into your system of course you can  press enter and will immediately boot but   if you don't want to do that you can set a timeout   that's for boots then for networking so let's go  down a little bit all these things can be ignored   for now at least for me if you want to enable  these things for boot have a look on nexos itself   i've shown you now where you can find all  these things and where to find information   so that's there so for networking we're  going to give it a host name in this case xos   people who use a laptop or wireless you can enable  this here so you can say okay wpa supplicant   or if you prefer network manager  you can enable network manager nothing really else to say about it i believe  before we also had some information here   about the network guard but i think it  has now moved to my hardware dot nix hardware configuration.nix file  so let's quickly go back there   yeah here we go so whoops that's not what i meant  to do so here we can see a few other options for   networking so by default this networking.use  dhcp is false so you might think why don't we   want like dhcp if you're not going too much  in advance into it yes but it is set up in   the line below so with your specific network  card so this will automatically be detected   by nixos itself by live cd and it will add it  here um so yeah it will enable it here i think   you need to keep this in the system it's a  deprecated thing but you need to keep it to   correctly build the system so don't really touch  any of these if you're not sure what you're doing let's not change anything here okay and some extras so what you can do is you  can move these network settings always over to   the normal configuration.nix file document it  doesn't really matter where it is located actually   but if you want to like do something  specific um yeah this is something i need to   comment out so if you want to like set up  a static ip address you can do that as well   via your network cards and ipv4 addresses and i  give it a specific ip address you can also say   like my default gateway and my name server you  can choose these or pick whatever you want but   these are all extras you can set up and i think  there are a lot more things you can actually set   up but you can have a look at on nick's os on the  package packages that exist for that and options internationalization there are a few things   so one thing to do is uncomment a time zone  you can change that to whatever you want   and then here the locales so i'm not really  going to touch any proxy networking proxy things   i18n the default locale i'll keep  it on english us and for the console let's enable that as well i don't really need this there we go and let me change the key map quickly there we go and one other thing is here under the  x server you can change your keyboard as well so   in my case there and there are also another  some extra options that you can enable   under xkb options but i won't do that for  now there we go and one other thing as you   can see here if you prefer like your system  to be in english but you want other locales   used for example date time monetary things you  can do that by using i18 and extra local settings   and that will be over written or it will overwrite  the default locale with these changes here then display managers desktop environments  and window managers so that's something we   can find over here so by default it enables  the x server if you want to use wayland   personally i haven't used it yet there is  a great wiki on it i have looked at that   but i haven't tried it out myself  so you'll have to look at it   yourself so just go to nixos.wiki and then search  for wayland or sway or whatever you want to use let's have a look here so by  default it has sddm and plasma   5 that's fine but i don't really want to  use these just because i want to change them   in this video uh quickly so you all know  how to do this so let's delete these oops and let's say okay services now before i do this   let me quickly show you again how you can  find these if you have forgotten already there we go so let's say i want a specific  display manager what i can do is i can go back to   next os i can go to the search at the top and then  instead of looking for packages i'm going straight   to options because it's my preferred way and i  can search for a display manager i press enter   and here i get a list of specific display  managers so i can use just normal start x   i can use sddm i can use lightdm i can use gdm  so there are a lot of options here as you can see   and then also they have their own  specific options that you can set up   so my case i maybe want to use like light em  and then if i want to use a desktop manager   i can look for that as well what exists xfce  mate lxqt kde gnome cinnamon so there are a lot   of them that i can actually pick so let's do that  let's move this over again make it a bit bigger and let's set this up so i'm going to   again work with like squarely brackets  and nesting everything in so services don't forget the semicolon x server there and the first thing we'll  do is actually delete enable the   x server so i can also delete that over here then what we want we want a display manager and in this case i want to use lightdm i'll just keep the example that i have over  here so it's clear for you all what i'm doing   so i say light dm dot enable equals true how  do i know this is how i need to enable it well let's say we search for lightdm and here we have all options for lightdm  so enable whether to enable lightdm as a display   manager so that's fairly normal that's most of the  time the default thing to do with these options is   to just enable it and set it to true how do we  know that we need to set it to through because   here it says it it's a boolean and by default it's  false but if we want like the m we can put this to   true then what else do we want not only a  display manager but a desktop manager maybe and in this case i might want to go for xfce  and this is also the same so just say enable   so desktop manager and i'm not going to use  scrolly brackets in this case so just say   desktop manager xfce enable equals true so  i'm not really going to configure it for now   and then for those who also want a window  manager there are a lot of options as well   so now we have everything that  exists um whoops so with xmo net inspector window manager small window manager  qtile left window manager ice so there are a   lot of window managers as you can see but  i think i'm going to go with bsp window   manager because that's also what i use on my  main machine so what we need to type is this bsp windowmanager.enable equals true   okay that's about everything we need to  do there's one more thing i would like to   show you which can be very useful and that is  with light dm and we are going to search for where is the option default sessions   so this is something that you can set up with  just a normal not with light dm but with any   display manager and that is this option  here so we can set a default session   and in this case for example they give a string  so a session name that's a string in this case and   it's with these double quotes and we can for  example choose no but we don't have gnome we have   xfce and bsp window manager   so let's go over here and under display  manager i can say default session equals   and here i can choose what the default session  will be so i have xfce so i can say xfce i also   have bsp window manager unfortunately i cannot  say bsp like this so that doesn't work um we can use for example window the  window manager bsp window manager   with a xfce backend so we can use everything  that exists within xfc and the window manager   will be in this case bsp window manager  so what we then can say is xfce plus   bsp window manager so that will work fine and if  we don't want an actual desktop manager backend   we have to state none plus bsp window manager  so that needs to be always set if you want to   use a window manager on its own but just for the  simplicity i think most people are well have some   experience with xfc i will put the default here to  xfce you can always change this manually when we   are in the display manager itself so once we boot  in a few minutes i will show that as well okay next up let's just move these items this back over  hardware so there is a lot of documentation about   plus audio and how to get bluetooth working  with your bluetooth headphones for example i have an example here of what you can for  example set up in this tutorial i'm just going to   enable sound and enable pulse audio i'm not  going to change anything else but for example   this is something from my code so you can change  a few other things here like media keys if you   want to use the media keys on your keyboard um  this hsphd fpd i think this is for like making   actual calls with your bluetooth headphone so  these are all things that you can set up extra and then other hardware is lip input so if you  have like a laptop and you want to use a touchpad   that's how you do it so you enable that here  as well so i don't really need to do that   for users here we have a default user  called chain it is a normal user and it   is part of the wheel group so the real group to  use sudo my name is not jane so let's change that and i can keep it as a normal user equals true  and the group wheel is fine for me now of course   maybe add yourself to the video group  audio group if you use network manager   that as well and if you're going to use printer or  scanner lp and scanner it's recommended to also be   also that you add something you also maybe want to  do is add a initial password so let's do that now   so let's say password just to make it easy now  what is an initial password well once we are   done here with this document we're going to  build system and when we restart the system   we have our user or default user that is set  and we can log in but we don't have a password   so what we then have to do is go into the tty log  into root and then change the password from there   that's fine but if you don't want to bother  with that you can just set initial password here   and you can log in and after what's changed as  well don't put your real password here because   let's say someone is able to access your  account your password is here in plain text also   if you forget this in the future and you get more  knowledgeable about nics and you think okay i'm   going to use flakes i'm going to put this in my  git repo that's fine but then your password is   available through to the whole internet so that's  also something not recommended so you can do this   but you can also remove it and i will show you  in a minute how you can change it via the tty so   that's personal preference i'm going to  keep it just for simplicity's sake here now   but personally i don't recommend that you do  this or at least change your password afterwards   then for packages so as you can see here we  have the options to add packages and it is   called in this case environment.system  packages equals with packages and then   these packages so these are the packages that  will be installed so these are not all the   packages these are the individual packages that  you actually want extra packages such as grub   um what else like pulse audio anything with sound  so that will probably elsa will will be evaluated   and will already be installed so you don't have  to bother with these things so for me i would   like to have vim already installed and wget that's  fine we'll keep firefox uh for now and not add it um these things you can well i'll let  you look at it on your own these are not   really things relevant now this is more  advanced so i'm not going to go into it further   the same with ssh and firewall i'm not going  to go in that na into that now most of the   things with firewall will probably have  their own option within a package that   you need to install so i'm not going to  change any of these things at the moment   lastly state version so state state version is  not really you don't really need to touch this   you might think oh i need to change this if i need  to update my my system but that's not the case so   there are other ways to update your system  i will show them as well in this mini course   but this is just the thing that tells  nix and xos okay this is the state   of my configuration so all these things  things that i've written down these are all   written down with the arguments that were  available in this state so if in the future   something changes for example with uh with grub or  anything with sound if this changes in the future   it doesn't really matter because we have this  version here if we're going to change this   manually and you don't change anything that has  changed here so any of these options correctly   it might not build your system afterwards  so only change this if you are sure   and if in the release notes it's actually stated  okay you can update this you can always do this   on your own at your own risk but you will probably  have to tinker afterwards if anything has changed   within your system and if your configuration  file is fairly long this will probably happen   so you don't really have to change this  at the moment that's a lot of a lot more   information here there's even a link apparently  so yeah you can can have a look at it yourself so that's for the configuration.nix file  and lastly so let's quickly save that   let's go to hardware configuration so this is  generated automatically with nixos generate config   as you can see here how do we that we do that  again with next os generate config root mnt it will automatically detect kernel  modules that are needed for your system   so in this case it detected that i was on a  virtual machine and it added kernel modules   vote io and some other things as well so you  don't really have to change anything here   as you can remember maybe here with init rd  kernel modules you can here for example give your   video drivers so it states you don't really  need to change anything yet but you can if you   really know what you're doing i prefer to do these  things in just my normal configuration.nix file   system file so this is my root directory and it  tells me here well it automatically added the uuid   if you want to use this configuration on multiple  devices what i can tell you that you should do   is change this by label and if you can  remember i called my home partition i called it   nixos so if on any other system you  call that partition the same name   on any other device then what you did on your  initial configuration it will always work because   otherwise you had to manually move over these  hardware configuration files or copy the the uuid   over to get it working on other systems so this  is how you make it future proof if you want to   move to another device and you partition it the  same way um i think the rest you don't really   need to to know or we've already covered it  so yep that should be all that's right quit then for the installation how are we going to  install we just say nixos install and if i haven't   made any typos this should build without any  issues so let's have a look if i made any mistakes so apparently it is building  yes okay that's fine now   after the installation is done so i've written  down here nick's os install once we are done here   it will prompt me to set a root password and  that's fine but once we boot in our actual   installation what we need to do is we can't  really install let's let's say we make a   change to the configuration.nix file afterwards  we add a new package or anything we can't really   use nixos install anymore what we then are going  to use is nixos rebuild switch so you'll see that   in a minute once i change a few things i will  i'll give an example and i will have to use this   to rebuild the system but at the moment we still  have to wait a bit before we can go on so let's   cover some other points then yeah so as you  can remember i've set a initial password   so that can be done with users.users  dot the name of the user of course   and then your initial password in this case let me  just here give my root password because that's the   last thing we need to do with the installer there  we go installation finished so now i can probably   reboot but i'm just going to use power off i  think it will automatically boot on its own yes and there we go let's login there we go so let's make this a bit  bigger for now so as i have set up before here we have our options so it defaults to xfce   but i can also just go to bsp window manager  or bsp window manager with the backend of xfce   for this well tutorial i'll just stick with  xfce to not make it too difficult for everyone   and my initial password that i have set up was  just password so let's have a look if i can log in   and i can so that works fine what i now  recommend that you do is do sudo password and um well for your user and then change it  why because it's not good to store your password well in plain text now if you haven't done this  let's log out if you haven't added the initial   password you won't be able to log in and it's  also not recommended that you log in here via   root so you don't really need to do that what  i recommend that you do is just press ctrl alt f1 uh f yeah f1 and that will bring  you to the tty so i can't do that   i'll have to do it like this invert manager  so that's the tty and then log in with root   and give the passport that i've set  up at the end of the installation and if i enable my num lock why am i not able to log in oh there we go okay   so from here i can say okay pass what  my user and let's change this now and now we can go back to my  login screen so that's ctrl alt f7 now i need to log in with my new login   password there we go and that also  still works so that's how you do that next up to install packages so we've  installed packages now via   let's say sort of etc nixos configuration  so that is still the same location why is it not allowing me there  we go let's make this a bit bigger if i can no i can't let's zoom in here then okay so at the moment we install our packages  here so environment dot system packages   equals pick with packages now we have vim and  wget let's say i now want like something like   firefox or htop or whatever i can add that  here as well so let's remove this command there all right quit and now we're not going  to say nixos install that's not really   going to work what we are going to do is say  sudo nixos we're going to rebuild the system   and we're going to automatically switch to the new  configuration so you don't have to do this you can   also just say build and afterwards switch just  just to check that everything works everything   builds but i am going to automatically switch  because i know i haven't changed this change   too much so i can do that here so let's switch and  now we should have firefox enabled in the system so it's downloading at the moment i don't  have an option for internet or firefox maybe now no so i will have to relock to get  this option here in this menu but i think if   we just run it from here yeah it already  finds firefox so i can launch it from here   so that's how easy it is to install firefox  on the system itself so let's close this now if you don't want to add something to  the configuration file as i mentioned at   the very beginning of the video let's say  you have a program that you don't use very   often or that you don't want in this in this  configuration file we can use the next package   manager with nix environment so nix and and  then install a specific package so we use   dash i capital a and then the package name  so how do we know what that is again we go to   nixos search packages and let's say i want h  top is that an option yes we have h top let's   click on it and it tells me here how to install  it so in this case it's next and ia nixos.h top   let's do that so nix and a nixuo.h top so  that's what we're going to do and just so   you know h stop we don't have it so next  and f i a h stop oh of course nixos that   there we go that's installed now i can say  h and we have that on the system as well   so that's how quick it is now it might be  possible that you forget that this exists on   your computer so it might be able you might  not remember it anymore so since it's not   not stated anywhere in a document we need to  know what is installed on the system this way   so what we can do for that is say nix and f dash  q and then we get a list of the packages that   are installed this way so in this case it's h-top  if i don't need h-top anymore i can say next and two dashes uninstall h-top and that gets removed  from the system so now i can't use htop anymore so i've already shown you how to do  it via the configuration.nix file yeah that all exists now if you want to look  up any of these packages or the options you can   have a look at the website as i shown you just now  there's also a man page for this and it's just man   configuration.nix and this is pretty  much the same as what you can find   online with with options so these are all the  different options with packages that exist   so it's pretty long personally i prefer just  using the website in my opinion it's a bit clear there we go declaring the packages so  i've done this already but   maybe something else good to know so  let's go back to my configuration.nix file so i have like vim wget and firefox  installed let's say i want also plex   that's a non-free package in  this case or an unfree package   so if i want to install this now  so again sudo nixos rebuilds switch it is not going to build and the reason  is because it's a package that is on free   so what we have to do in this case is we have to  set an environment variable nix package underscore   allow on three equals one so that's one way to  do it personally i don't like to do is because   every time you need to install something you  have to add this to the system if you restart   so that's not something i prefer what i do is i go  again to my configuration file and i add an extra   option to the file itself and that option is next  packages dot config dot allow unfree equals true   and this will allow me to  install plex so let's rebuild and as you can see it's building now now  one thing to know is i've installed plex   and it is on a system now but i won't be  able to use plex so let's open firefox here   and once it's done building i can  navigate to i think it's local host slash web i think this is the address for the the  plex server this will not work so let's enter no   it's it doesn't exist in this case so i can't  go to the plex media server and the reason is   because i've installed as a package so at  the moment it's just here as a package it   doesn't really work so it's something to  keep in mind every time you have a look   on the nexos website for packages so plex for  example it is here but it's not how we want to use   it or how we want to set it up so i think you can  start a service from here if you have it installed   but if you want to set these services up already  from the beginning from the config file itself   have a look at the options tab and from here as  you can see plex is a service so we can enable it   by default and i recommend that you do that  here so let's do that instead so i can delete   plex from my environment.system packages because  it will always be evaluated the whole system so   it will know that i need to that we need blacks  in this case and let's say here services.blacks dot enable equals true let's save this rebuild   and in this case it will actually  install blacks as a service and if i go back to firefox and reload now the  same address does work and as you can see the plex   server is running so the service is running in  the background so that's something to keep in   mind always have a look at the options um if  there is any options you can enable it makes   its quality of life it's much easier to do this  than having to enable it manually every time okay so that's with options here yeah then variables  that's something interesting i think most of you   won't really use variables or overlays that i  will discuss now but i want to show them to you   just because they can be very powerful tools  personally i don't really use them very often   but they can be pretty useful  so i'm going to see a very basic   variable and a very basic overlay and if you're  really interested in these things you can always   look up documentation because there's plenty  of documentation and videos about them so let's   go over here and to set up a variable let's say  in configuration.nix here i go all the way to   the top and between these squarely brackets i say  let's and in that's all i need to do in this case   so in between let and in i put my variable and  then that variable can be used within this file   and it will be correctly used so let's say  i want a variable user and my user is myself   so what i've set up now is that the variable user  so where why would we want to use variables well   variables are well if you're not if you  don't really know anything about coding   or anything variables are things that can  change pretty often these are things that   are used multiple times in the configuration and  for example if i use my name my user which you   will use often in configuration files if you  use them often or if they are very advanced   if you don't want to type them multiple times you  can set it up as a variable and why is this useful   well then we can use the variable everywhere  within the document so let's say we have to   i have to write down my own name multiple times  within this document and i share my configuration   with someone else who wants to use the exact same  configuration well they will have to go over the   whole document and they will have to um well  they have to change every time my name is added   to their own name so in this case i can just  say user is mateos and then i can go down here where is it like here and from here i  can delete my name here and to set the   variable here i use the dollar sign and then  between curly bracket squarely brackets i say   user i think it was user right yes and then  it will be used within the file correctly and   everything will build fine now for one time usage  here it's not really useful but if you write it   down multiple times in a file it's a lot use more  useful because then i can just change my name here   and it will have effect on the whole document also  these variables are often used for next channels   i will go in that into that in a moment but  if like urls change you can change that here   and it's much easier because if any of these  items here within my configuration file use a   specific channel um everything will be  updated so that's very useful but this   is just a very basic use case of a variable so  let's rebuild and i'll show you that this works and normally nothing should change yes  there you go so everything builds fine   with this variable even after changing so  another example here that i've given this is from   home manager but it should work fine with  anything else so within home manager there is a   option to um edit rofi so this is doesn't  really doesn't really exist within the next   os options but we're not within home manager it  does and it has an option team and my team is   rofi theme and rofi team is set up over here  and it is all this code so if i don't want   to add all this code here or i want to use it  multiple times let's say i have a color scheme   that i want to use not only for roofie but for  anything else i can set up the color screen here   scheme here and i use it multiple times  within the same configuration file overlays this is something i have to admit is   something i don't really use it i know it's a very  powerful tool but in my opinion the documentation   isn't the best so i don't really bother too  much one thing that i do in my configuration   so i do want to show that i think this  is applicable to a lot of you is actually update discord so within the next package next  to a next package manager discord gets updated   fairly quickly but in my opinion not quick  enough so what you can do then is say okay   within configuration.nix i can say nix  packages dot overlays equals square brackets in this case it's self and super now what  are these let's just quickly open this   website the wiki so this is a good example here so let's we have  the main package so that's self that's discord   what we do is we add a overlay so we have  or or again our main package we add an   overlay to it and that becomes a new  package so that's why we use self and super   and then we can use that new package afterwards  so the overlay is something these are attributes   that get changed so let's say the newest  version has some things that are different   these things gets changed but we  still use the package the main package   from the next package manager in this  case so that's still needed so self super and then we do these whoops no we don't need that we need  this one so the parenthesis there we go and now we state what we want to  actually put an overlay on so in this case it's   discord and we're going to change some attributes  so we're going to say overwrite at us parentheses and i'm not quite sure what this does  honestly but yeah it's it's kind of different   for vegetable and fetch from get up so yeah  i've put two examples here so if you want   to try this out these are two examples  here um and from source we say built-ins   and we are going to fetch a tall ball so  in this case uh discord provide this could   provide a double of their latest version  so that's what we are going to go and get and this one needs to be closed i believe  yes i forgot this one doesn't there we go and then from here we say what to url so  in this case it's url https discord.com   api slash downloads question mark platform  equals linux and format equals stop.j there we go that's all we need to do actually something else to note in this case so i forgot  to close these there we go something note is   i only added the url here if we're going to  use flakes with this overlay we do need to add   a sha so why do we need to need to add that  sharp because otherwise it will state it's   impure and it won't accept the overlay so you  will see that in a minute when we do flakes or   in a few minutes and when we do flakes it will  throw an error but then we have to correct it   in here but this should work fine um  let's right quit and let's rebuild this   and if i haven't made any typos that should this  should do it oh i forgot something i think so yeah   so i've set up the overlay but the thing  is the overlay won't do anything so i don't have discord at the moment so let's  try to open this code it does not exist and   why is that well the overlay as i mentioned is  it just changes a package so if the package is   not present the overlay won't do anything  so what will i have to do i will go back to   here to my system packages and i will  add discord right quit and let's rebuild and now it will install discord from the next  packages and then it will apply the overlay so we'll have to wait for a minute and then  here's another example this is from github so if   you have like a github where you want to update it  so an overlay from github you can just state okay   overwrite add us fetch from github and then  just state so you cannot give the url i think   but you can also just say the owner the  repo and then if you want to fix it in time   you can also just give a commit id like what is  it i'm not sure revision i think it stands for   so if you have a commit id you can say that  there as well and then the show of course   also needed so let's see if we have discord now and we do and we don't get any messages of  it needing to be updated so that's good news   yeah and that works so that's good to see   so let's close all these things out because  we do not need that at the moment whoops there we go but i recommend that you look at overlays  on your own it's much more advanced so   maybe not something for beginner   and then here applying of course i think  everyone will know now sudo nixos rebuild switch some x-rays is updating so to update your system  with this configuration what we are going to do   is first add a channel so in this case we i think  this channel is added already from the start of   the installation but if you don't have it you  can add a channel like this so next channel add and then url so in this case for example i  have https nexus.org channels and then the stable   version if you are using the unstable version you  will have to use like nexus unstable i believe it   is but normally this should already be added as a  channel so this update channel as you can call it   already should be present so i can just say  nick's channel update so once you do this one time   you can always just do this and all the channels  that exist will be updated so if you have any   other channels such as home manager which we will  see will then also be updated so these are updated and then afterwards what we can do is just  say nix sudo nixos rebuild switch upgrades and then we'll go over the system again and   if there are any existing packages  that can be updated it will do that   so let's have a look if there are any packages  that can be updated so there are a few hopefully not too much and something else to note is you  don't really have to run this command   if you don't want to what you can do is set up  in your system so your configuration.nix file   an option called system.auto upgrades you can  enable it and then add the channel so then it   will automatically search within that channel  for updates and every so often after you run   rebuild it will also auto upgrade i think you'll  have to look this up i'm not going to do this now   there is an option how often does this i think you  can set it like weekly or daily um or every time   you rebuild that it checks i'm not sure about  it i think by default every time you rebuild   but this is how you can do it  without having the hassle of   always having to update it so every  time you rebuild it will then update so apparently it is a big update um garbage  collection also something very important i   will show that in a minute because everything  that is now being updated gets its own location   in the next door and since we have multiple  generations now in the system that means that   also the assets from my older  generation are still in the next store   why is this well as i said before next  tries to be unbreakable so that means that   it needs to store these older versions as well  so if we don't want that if we want to delete   a generation or if we want to get rid of all  the unused the files we don't need we can use   a garbage collect collector in this case if you  don't use this and you forget it and you rebuild   your system often with new things or update very  often this will take up a lot of space in your   hard drive disk so i do recommend that you run  these commands once in a while so what are these   commands well it is just nyx collect garbage so  that's how we can collect all the unused stuff   you can also give this a  specific flags like delete   alt so everything that is old gets removed  if you want to remove a specific generation   we can first have a look here so  next environment list generations so we have at the moment two generations  and that's because we've rebuilt   the system one time very majorly and updated it so what we now can do is delete  one of these if we don't need it   of course in your configuration.nix file if you  have followed my steps until now you might have   already set a max limit of generations if that's  like a few it will automatically delete these if   not we need to delete we can delete one of these  by saying okay nix environment delete generations   and here we can state which generation so we can  say okay i want to delete one you can't really   delete two because that's the current generation  but you can here at multiple generations   if you want to delete generations older than  a specific date you can also say okay after   that are older than seven days  that's also something you can do   but if we choose uh the normal garbage collection  collector it will also get rid of these   so let's do a collect garbage and this will remove  all the things that are not needed so in this case   it cleaned 730 megabytes so that's a lot actually  that is freed now something i can recommend is   try to run this sometimes as pseudonyx collect  garbage and then with flag d because then it   will sometimes find some other things that can  be deleted yeah so as you can see it still finds   a bit more let's see how much this will be yeah  another 360 megabytes for it so that's like my go   to command to collect garbage if you don't want to  run these commands again there's an option to set   it up in your configuration.nix file and that's  with nix.settings no nix.gc and then we can set   it up here as automatic so it will automatically  garbage collect when do we do it let's say weekly   and then an option to delete older than seven days  i have set up here you can also optimize the store   i don't see a lot of usage but i think it can't  hurt too much so why not optimize the store and   set it up here i would recommend that you run this  not too often so and only set it as an option to   delete older than a specific day why is that let's  say we say garbage collection automatically and we   say daily for example for the dates that's fine  but let's say we rebuilt the system with an error   and it also afterwards run the garbage collect  collector we don't have any generations to go   back on so that's something to keep in mind  so maybe add an option to delete older than   a specific date because otherwise you will have  to go in your tty and then edit everything there   so that's not really recommended so maybe set it  up something like like this is maybe recommended okay well that's pretty much it for  nexus so everything you want to configure   can be done here on the etc nixos  configuration.nix there's plenty   of space to add extra things everything you can  find everything you want to install can be found   of course here uh in nix on nixos.org and then  just search for packages and options so that's   all here so you can set up whatever you  want and install whatever you want so   that's how we do it here if you want to  use home manager that's another option   we can do that as well now what is home manager  let's quickly go over here and clear this home manager is a a bit like configuration.nix but we can see it as   a configuration that makes  for your user environment so let's say i install firefox so  we've installed firefox in this case   on my system firefox will be available on the  whole system by every user that wants to use it   and that's fine but if you want to only make  firefox available for you for your you only as the   user you can sort of set it up within home manager  and only you will be able to use it so if you have   another user they won't be able to access it so  that's something very useful about home manager   um another thing that is very useful in my opinion  is it as its own options that can be declared so   for example rofi as we saw a few minutes ago  with the variables rophi is something that can be   downloaded from nixos the package nix  the package manager but we can't really   set at set up any options so there aren't any  options available within nexos if we look at   home manager we can download the package from  nexo from nix and we can actually set up specific   settings so we can declare these  settings within our home manager file   and then we can change everything so that's it  gives a lot more options that we can can use   so that's also the perfect way to manage dot  files because within nixos that well there   are options to manage dot files but for specific  programs there aren't any options so that's why i   would recommend that you then use home manager  i'll give an example in a minute about this   now to get started with home manager first  of all let's have a look at the github so this is the home manager  github let's zoom in a bit and there's a lot of information here but the most   important things in my opinion is  the manual and options so let's open   the manual and the mini manual is also  pretty long a bit like the manual from   nixos and how to install and set everything up and  then there are the options and tthis is appendix a   i think there are like four different appendixes  but this is the main one and this is a bit   like as you can see here from nick's on the next  website from options here we have a lot of options and it's kind of the same with appendix  a so we have options like accounts.email   this is a very long document as you can see  with different programs that we can set up   and all these options don't exist here on the  website so that's something well some of them   do but it gives a lot more extra options within  home managers to set up your packages actually so let's set this up shall we so as i did before to update your channels  um well just a normal next channel   we are now going to add an extra channel so  we can make use of these packages as well   and in this case we are going to add home  manager so how do we do that we say nix dash   channel and then two dashes add  and then we're going to add the url   so in my case let's just make this a little  bit bigger https slash github.com slash nix   community slash home dash manager slash archive  slash and then the end of the url depends   so if you're using the unstable version as me  you can say master. dot g zat if you're using a   stable version of nexos you can say okay release  dash 21.1 so that's our current release that's   how you then add it in my case i use unstable  so it's master and then we also need to give   it the channel a name so in this case i say home  manager so i recommend that you do this as well   to give it a name otherwise it will just take  the last part of the url so master set so that's   not really recommended so this is how you add the  channel um now to set up your home manager there   are two options so we can install home manager as  a module but we can also install a standalone so   what does that mean if you want to configure home  manager within or existing configuration.nix file   we use a module and if you want to use home  manager separately with a separate document   which we pretty much also can do with nixos module  because we can import these documents but whatever   if you want to have it separately  altogether we can use the standalone version   personally i prefer the modules but you can do  whatever you want if you want to use the module   do not forget to add sudo in  front of your next channel command   this is because we are going to use home manager  but since configuration.nix is located within   etc slash nixos which is a root  directory we need to add the sudo   before the command otherwise it won't work but  in in just for the sake of it i will do both   so in this case i will say sudo and if i now do  sudo nick's channel list as you can see we have   our existing unstable channel and our home  manager channel so they are added if i just say   channel list without sudo there isn't  any so that doesn't exist so i can now   remove sudo and also edit on a user level  and now it is on a user level as well   and to update channel now so we can  make use of it we say nix channel   update and this will add the channel and just  to be sure maybe also a sudo channel update yeah   there we go so it doesn't really change anything  so i don't think you need to add sudo in this case okay now i added here just to be sure log out  and log back in that is because sometimes it   won't work i will try without but it's maybe  recommend to log out and log back in just   to not have any issues so let's  first set up home manager within   our configuration.next file so what  we do is we go to the file itself there we go and at the top with imports  we are going to import home manager   and since it is a existing channel now we  can say okay we want to add home manager   slash nixos that's pretty much everything we need  to do to add home manager to our configuration   something to check is do we have a user that's  very important and we are pretty sure we are have   one here there we go and it needs to be a normal  user of course because that's the whole point of   home energy that everything is installed as a  normal on the normal user environment so that's   fine and then to add extra home manager packages  let's go all the way to the bottom make some space   i can say home manager and it will now know  this the document can evaluate this because   of course um this channel exists and we have  added at import so we can use that and add users   and here's already a great place to use  my variable because again i need to add   my own name but in this case since we  have variable i can add that equals and then again how are we going to evaluate  this part of document well we are going to use   nix packages to install these there another curly bracket let's make some space there we go and in here so from here i can   write whatever i want so as i explained before  with the normal packages like uh next packages   like if we want to add blacks you can just say  services.plex services.legs.enable equals true   well these options from the appendix can also  be used in here so only in here of course   in between these these curly brackets  so let's go back to home manager and let me show you this here we go so in the appendix  so things like programs dot mercurial for example   i'm not sure what it is but i can enable it in in  there in this code so that's something i can do   if i just want to install some random packages  but then on a user level i can say home   dot packages equals and then the packages  so packages stopped let's say page top again   so i don't think i think i um uninstalled it  but let's check quickly yeah i don't have it   perfect so from here i can do it  like this and it will be installed   also maybe something to note again maybe if  you can remember we can also just say with   packages semicolon and then we can remove  packages here and list other things like   btop or whatever but for now i will not do that  just to make it a bit simpler for everyone there   we go and this should work without any problems  so let's write quit and to now use home manager in   this case as a next module i can just rebuild with  one command and say nexo sudo nexus rebuild switch and if i haven't made any typos it should build i do see some things that have to do with home  managers so that's good to see yes it builds and the service is also started  so that's also good news so let's now say h   stop now it should work and there is h stop so  that's great perfect but as i mentioned before   you have again a lot more options you can add  here and you can do whatever you want of course now let's set home manager up as a normal  standalone version so let me get rid of   this actually because otherwise it  will cause some issues with the flake   so if you're not planning to use it this way   inside a flake so if you're also interested in  flakes you don't really need to do this i will   remove this because in a flake it will need to be  done in another way so let's delete these things at the top there we go let's rebuild just for the sake of it there we go now normally these channels that  we added also don't really   you don't really need them if  you're going to use flakes so   you can also remove them as well so if you don't  need them like we can say sudo nix channel remove home manager so that's now removed the channel as well so i  don't really need it actually if we're going to go   in a minute and use flakes so for the standalone  version what we do is well i still have the   channel as my normal for my normal user here  as you can see so i just removed it for for   the the root user so list yeah so here it still  exists so what i can do is i can say nyx shell and then home manager between single quotes  a install and this will install home manager   separately from the next configuration um and  it tells me the path does not exist so that   means that i will have to relock as well so as  i mentioned before there is a possibility that   you will need to relock after adding the channels  so that's what i'm going to do now let's log out and back in oh yeah so that's kind of a book i need  to restart because i'm not sure why this   happens but it's i think only a bug within the  virtual machine so let me quickly restart here it shouldn't take too long  yeah there we are already okay so let's try again maybe it's still isn't  it yeah and now it shouldn't complain anymore   yeah it will install home manager there  we go and it tells me okay it is stored in   dot config next packages  slash home so let's go there as you can see here we have the file so home.nix so let's go in there and everything here that  is already in here you don't need to touch it   actually you can of course remove the the comments  but everything in here you don't need to change   all this is actually needed to correctly run home  manager i can of course add some extra in here so   let's see do i now still have h stop otherwise  i can again show you it's just the same as   yeah so it doesn't exist so it's pretty much the  same here as we did in the next module i can again   let's open this i can just say home.packages  equals and let's in this case use with packages h top right quit and to then build this it's a bit  different so if we want now apply this to the   system from home manager since it's our standard  it's a standalone version what we need to do is   not sudo nexus rebuild switch we can't use  that we didn't need to do something else   and since it's for user environment we don't  need sudo so we can already delete that in   this case it's also not home it's also not nixos  rebuild but it is home manager so that means what   we're going to do here is we are going to start  home manager and switch to the new version that   we have set so in this case the only thing that  changed is that we want h top so let's do that there we go and now since  i've i set we need h stop   i can run h-stop so yeah that all works perfect and again the same here you can add whatever  you want between the big squarely brackets   whatever you want you want to apply to the  system that can be added here as code so yeah   have a look at the appendix what is available  and you can customize to your content so i already mentioned the different options  so this is just a link to the appendix   but if you don't want to look at the  appendix online there is a man home   configuration dot nix and again this is also  a huge document with a lot of options so here   you can find everything as well what  is available within home manager itself um what else yeah so this is all  fine i have something else maybe   to note if you're going to add like a service  within home manager as a stand-alone version   you will have to i think manually enable  them so if i want to use dunst for example so if you add home manager as a module in nixos  it will automatically also start these services as   a as a service system-wide but since if we start  a service as a user we need to actually start it   as you on user level so if i add for example  dunst here and i say again home manager switch   it will install dunst but it will prompt  me here okay suggested command systemctl   user start done so in this case i'll have  to manually enable these things so that's   something to keep in mind and maybe also something  negative about the standalone version in this case   as i mentioned before i prefer the the  version within nyx os as a module actually   and of course home manager switch to just rebuild  perfect oh yes something else maybe very useful   to know what i like home manager for is the ease  whoops the ease of setting up your dot files so   that's something very useful in my opinion so  if you have existing dot files let's say you   are using now ubuntu or arch or whatever and you  already have spent a lot of time customizing your   your setup your desktop environment your window  manager whatever it is your key bindings um we   can always use them a lot of people are scared  that they will have to again set these things up   and i understand why you would be  scared because it takes a lot of time to   set everything up if you're using it for multiple  multiple years now already so what i do in this   case for the dot files let's say you have an  existing dot file from in my example allegri   let's say you have customized alecrity you have  a file electric.yml file that you want to use   but you don't want to do it manually you want it  in your next configuration well you can do that   so how do we do it in home managers so this can  be done in the standalone version and also so all   these things can be done on the standalone version  and in the next module so keep that in mind   but since i know if the standalone i'm going to do  it in here what you can do is say let's just move   this out of the way because this is actually  just something here i'm not going to do this   the plus plus so i can say okay home dot file  equals and then the location where i want   to save a specific file so this home manager  will in this case create a file within.config   i like ready like read.yaml and what does  it need to need to say well we use these   double single quotes that's used for multi-lines  ss comments actually as well as the input here and   in this case this is what needs to be put in the  document itself so if i go to my own config here where is it yeah i like reading and if i open this whoops yeah so this is my just the basic yaml  file but if for me it gets created um with it   is declared so this is all auto generated that's  why it's also a sim link as you can see but if you   have this document and you just copy the code  within your alacritty.yaml file you can just   place it within home manager and this will always  create that file for you so you won't have to mess   with it on your own after rebuilding the system  every time the only thing that is a negative point   in my opinion if you're going to use like this and  not declare these things if there's an option of   course is that if for example let's say alacrity  gets a big update and the way they set up their   yaml file is different or they use another way of  configuring this will of course break alacritty   and if if we do it declaratively and no manager  and nixos know these changes are happening they   will of course change these options so it  will build a correct version of the document   so that's something future proof that is not  available with this of course but the chances   are that these these things updating that  massively these chances of course slim um   another way of storing or actually copying  or sim linking these things and saving   it actually in your home manager file is  these two options so again let me open my file manager here so i use doom emacs and  doom emacs uses a directory called.doom.d   where everything is set up for my emacs now what  i do in my setup so let's go to my setup here i have a module for my editors  the emacs and i have copied over   my dot doom dot d directory here so i have  a copy of it and it's always within my files that i have available and it knows okay i  need to build a directory called doom dot d   and where can i find this directory so what do  i need to copy in this case i'm not going to say   a specific text string but i will say source dot  doom dot d so it will take that file and it will   copy it over to the correct location and in  this case it's just in my home directory on   the dot doom dot d since it is a directory  i need to use the option recursive because i   want to of course link all the files within the  directory as well and another option that i use   but probably most of you won't is the on  change option so this means that it will   also evaluate any changes within this directory  so within my doom.d directory and if it sees   any changes it will run a script that i'm  f made and that's also in the same location   and this will then update my my do me mix actually  but if this is more advanced if it's just a simple   document and a simple dot file for config  this is not really needed you can just use   something like this so if you just store the  file somewhere you know it always is present   or you can say okay at dot config poly bar so  this is for me a script i use copy that script   and where do we where can i find it well source  in the same location as this file and then   it is called mic.sh and since spoilerball needs  to be needs the script to be executed executable i   also added as well so that's how you can easily if  you have a location where all your dot files are   you can save them there and then you can say  okay in this location on my computer i want   the file that is here so this file needs to  be copied over to here and that's how you can   easily then set up your config files actually  in the system personally if there's an option   to declare it i would recommend that you just  declare it so this is an example for bsp window   manager i enable of course bsp window manager and  then there are specific rules and these rules they   tell like my computer okay where do i need to  open these things or what is the state of my   of these windows within my system and this will  be then converted to a dot file inside my.config   so if there are any have a look at of  course the appendix if there are any options okay let's make it a bit smaller whoops there that's pretty much everything  for home manager in this case um   it just gives more options  that are not available within   nix os and their options actually now let's move  everything over to a flick now why would you   want to use a flick in this case so let's first  unlock here right quit clear so what are flakes   flakes are a upcoming feature of the next  package manager um i have quoted them the   upcoming feature because it has been an upcoming  feature for quite a long time now but whatever now   personally i really like flakes it's very easy  to set up specific things so what you can do is   specify codependency the clarity declaratively  this means that when we set up the flake and we   generate or build the flake it will create a  flake.lock file now what is a flaked log file   well i will show you in a minute what it is but it  will save all the states of the core dependencies   now which are the core dependencies to build the  system well it's nix the package manager and if   you're going to use home manager that's also  one that we need to know what the state is off   to build the system so with a flake we can  actually freeze everything within time so   with just normal nics and home manager we can  always rebuild the system but it will always take   the latest package version there is now if you  don't want that if you want to have everything   in time we can use the flake.log file  and every time we rebuild the system   we will get the same version of all the packages  and everything so it will take like the the commit   the the commit in in github orchid level whatever  it is and it will store this in the flag.log file   and it will always build the packages depending  on the last commit that was stored in this flag   log file so this will also make it  very easy to update the whole system   because well we just need to run one piece of code  to run to update nixos and whole manager so yeah   um so that's this also something else with  flakes what i really like is that i can   build multiple host configs in one flake so with  one flake one git repository where i can save the   flake i can have multiple hosts i can build so  i have for example my desktop i have my laptop   i have virtual machines so all these  can be built within one flake actually   and it's it's the perfect way to actually store  your dot files within github so it's pretty hard   to actually store nexos and home manager inside a  github repository just because these are located   sometimes in a very awkward place like etsy.nexus  that's a root location so it's not really ideal to   create a git repo there and if you don't move  these files if you want to assembling them   to your home directory that's also very um well  not ideal to then work with it with a git with   a github repository um do keep in mind if you are  planning to save these things in a git repository   flakes do work with um wit and know that you use  git so if you add a new file to your repository on   your desktop you will have to use like git git  add and add actually the document to the to the   repository well before actually merging it but  otherwise your flake won't correctly build so   this will need to run if you're not planning  on using github you don't really need to   listen to what i'm saying now but if you do  keep that in mind every time you add a new file   to your flake do the git add and then  whatever fl document or all the documents so let's get started there is a wiki for  flakes i'm not going to show it but there's   a lot of information here you can find  a link in the description in this case   um i will just set it up for now so the first  thing we want to do is let's get out of here and let's edit our configuration.nix file so  sudo then let's see nexus configuration.nix let's go to the bottom just  to make it easier for myself and one thing we need to do is to say okay nix normally you sh you don't really need  this especially if you're going to build   from a flake um but just for now for the  initial setup of the flake we do need to   add this actually to our configuration.nix  file so next equals package is package.nix and then something just for ease of use  what i do is add experimental features equals nix command and flicks so why do i  add this well if i don't add these things   as i mentioned it's still a feature that is being  developed that is experimental so every time we   want to use a flake initialize them or run them we  need to add like an extra argument like experiment   features flakes for example and if we add this to  our configuration.nix file we won't have to add   this every time we do something with a flake  so let's do that and we're going to rebuild ah i made a typo so this will let us use  flakes in the system for now and then to generate the flake what we can do is  first maybe make a directory where we're going to   store the flake and or whole system configuration  so you can call this whatever you want in my   case i'm just going to call it flick let's go  into flake and now i can run nix flake in it and this will generate my flake.nix  file so let's have a look so as you   can see there's only one file flag.ni  if we have a look inside this document it's not really much let's make this a bit bigger these two packages so packages and default  packages this is not really needed at the   moment these are just some placeholders actually  for some packages we don't really need them so   we're going to delete these there we go and  as you can see there's an option for outputs   but we are also going to add some inputs why  is that well the inputs are a bit like the next channels that are going  to be used to build the system   so let's add a normal channel so in  this case for example next packages   so to use the next package manager we're going to  add that link here in this case it's a github link   next packages.nixos unstable if you're again  using a stable version you will have to   change unstable to the stable link so 21.11 i  presume there we go and then within the inputs   we can actually add well how can i explain so  the inputs here these are attribute sets of all   the dependencies that are used within the flake so  what does that mean as i mentioned is a bit like   the next channels these are the things that are  used to build what is in outs in outputs so if   we don't add next packages.url and we want to  actually install let's say grub or whatever htop   firefox whatever we can't do it because we  don't know where to find this and otherwise   we can find from this input so that's why we  need the inputs and the outputs itself these   are the functions of an argument that is used as  as the as the input for the reference so what do i   mean by that these are all the packages that are  going to be installed within the system you can   put in here whatever you want so packages  configurations modules etc so all these   things can be added in here i will just show you  a basic setup of how you can do this for a normal   nix configuration so let's say we don't want to  we want to use flakes but we don't want to use um   the the nick only use the nix configuration  file and not home manager for example so what   we do in this case let's go over here nixos  flake so this is what is being added so again what we do is we say let so we are going  to use a few variables in this case and you'll see why in a minute so one  of these variables is system equals x 86   64 dash linux of course if you have like a 32-bit  system or anything else you'll have to look this   up on your own i don't know these on the top of  my head i don't know which exist but i think most   of you will have a 64-bit system so that can  be added here why do we add this as a variable   well otherwise we have to mention it every time  we want to install a package that it is for the   64-bit version for a 64-bit version system so  that's why we add it as a variable and it will be   taken in account when we build the  system then we make a variable packages   and this is used because of course the variable  packages as we used in configuration.nix how we so we can use the same name in this case  because otherwise we have to use next packages   instead of packages so we import whoops in this case next packages and where  can we find nix packages well that's   this input so yeah we inherit the system which we set up here so 64-bit and just to make life a bit easier for us if  you don't mind using proprietary software allow   free equals true or any software that needs  that has options to purchase something then also lib equals nix packages.live  okay that's a basic setup that you can use   to make yourself everything  a bit easier for yourself   so then what are we going to use these variables  for well for a nixos configuration of course there we go whoops now we can give or make yourself a user so this  is going to be the host name of the system so   since i'm now using nix os i can say nixos if i  want to give it another hostname i can do that as   well so i can give it my own name for example and  then we use lip.nex os system squarely brackets we inherit the system again and  then we can tell them the file   what we want to use or which modules we want  to use in this case let's use our configuration   dot next file now i'm not going  to point in here to at c dot nexus   c slash nixos configuration.nix  i'm just going to point to the   same configuration file within this flake  so something i now need to remember is i need to copy over etc and exhaust and then  configuration.nix and i want to copy over it   to here but since in configuration.nix  i also import hardware configuration.nix   i need to actually import both so  let's put an asterisk there we go   and now both files are here and they are also now  managed by me and not by root so i can now easily   edit them and actually everything now before i  actually switch over to this flake now because   this is actually everything we need  to do so if you have already set up   your configuration and your hardware configuration  we are actually pretty much done from here i can   just push this to github and everything is done  we can store this as as a github repository in   this case one thing i do need to do before i do  that is since we now are using these variables   i do need to remove these squarely brackets  because they are not really needed anymore so these are here by default but since  we're using like variables and everything   um that's actually so the scroller  brackets we delete are actually these two   so yeah let's write quit and let's build  this flake shall we so to build a flake   um in this case so whatever mentioned  here yeah so we do sudo nexus   rebuild switch so that's that's kind of the same  as how we should normally do it but since we are   now using a flake we put the flag flake and if i  name my system well my host inside flake flake.nix   nixos like here i can just add like a dot and  it will go a dot and a hashtag for example   uh it will go and look for my profile called  nixos and it will be built but i think if   i do this now it will say there isn't a  host named nixos let's try this actually   oh and i've made a typo apparently oh yes before  we do that let's fix that typo so i forgot a one of these so let's rebuild let's see what it does i think now it is  just updating the inputs so yeah and here it   complains so it says something okay it can't find  this the nixos host so we'll need to change this   to what i set up before in this case it is my own  name so let's add that to the end of the command and it still gives me a problem  what is it in this case let's see ah another typo configuration that  should be it so let's now rebuild yeah perfect so it is building but it gives me  an error and there is a reason why it gives me   an error because uh the flakes within a flake  we can't really use um any of the overlays that   we have refused at the moment so if we are using  anything from fetchtarball or github we do need to   add a sha256 as you can see here and if you are  following along now for almost two pretty much   two hours if you can remember correctly we added  a discord overlay to our configuration.nix file   so let's have a look here in configuration.nix there we go so we added the url but it it will  state that it's impure and the reason is because   it doesn't have a sharp so in this case what  we need to do to actually be able to build i   can just uncomment this and delete and get rid of  it but i want to build it now let's say with this with this option what we will have  to do let's go back here to nixos my overlays here we go so as you can see i need  to add a shaw and this shot is 52 zeros so i will   have to add these 2 52 zeros at the moment and  why do i add the 52 zeros well that's because   uh if i i don't know what the show is so i just  add 52 characters you can do whatever we can   write whatever you you want but i just write  52 of these and afterwards it will spit out   the correct char and i can change it afterwards  and it will work fine so let's do this quickly there we go so that's the shop let's  right quit let's try to rebuild the flake and in this case it gives me an error  let's see why it gives me an error i think it is just because i don't  need this anymore so let's delete this actually not sure i think it's just not needed  anymore now so let's uncomment this quickly it just still gave me an error syntax error  ah yeah i see that's a bit the movie i'm sorry let's just get this back in here i've  just forgot something here so i forgot the double quotes that should work now i'm  very sorry yeah so here we have the correct   shaw now so that's automatically spread out by  the console so let's quickly copy this there   let's see if i have it whoops yes i do so let's  go back to my configuration there we go whoops delete these and paste whoa that's a bit  wrong let's try it again is that not working there it is and now we can rebuild and now it  shouldn't complain about the sha and as you can see it is going to rebuild a  few of these packages again but not too much   because everything that we have built already  within configuration.nix already exists so it   doesn't really need to change anything but now  we've built from the flake itself so that's   something pretty useful now if  you want to use like multiple multiple hosts what you can do   is within nix configuration so now i have one  which is my name we can here say okay check equals   and then the same code for example and then  we can point to another configuration.nix file   somewhere in the directory so that's how  we can set up multiple hosts actually okay right that's pretty much for how to use the  configuration.nix file next up we have homemanager   now for home manager we can do two different  things so we can set up home manager separately or   actually inside this next os configuration module  here so to do this separately we'll do that first   what we need to do is on the inputs so  let's make this a bit smaller now because   i feel like this is not really readable  anymore yes there so under inputs we are going to add home energy as a  channel so in this case we do need to   add this again because we're not using the  same channels as we did before actually   so all these channels that we added  beforehand you don't really have   to add them if you are automatically  going to build from a flake so that's   that's not really needed so we add them here so  home equals and for home manager i'm going to   actually use curly brackets because i'm going  to add something more than just a url so url is get up nix community home manager and also something i'm just going to state is  that the inputs dot next packages dot follows   equals next packages so what does this tell home  manager well if i'm not mistaken home manager has   its own packages that can be used but if we tell  home manager to use next packages it will actually   build and set everything up with the packages  that are within the next package manager so that's   maybe a bit more useful because i believe next the  next package manager gets updated more frequently   to a newer verger version so yeah that's why we  add this here now to add this module well you can   call this module whatever you want so personally i  do hm config but you can name it whatever you want   and this is of course in the in in the  outputs um here we go are going to set up   our home manager now before we do that before  we set it up here uh something we do need to   remember is that we need to import it for our  output so we have it in inputs but we still   need to actually import it so for next packages  this is automatically done because it's over here   so it is evaluating using next packages but we  also need to evaluate the code using home manager   so that's what we get over here so  it now we'll use from the outputs   home manager from the inputs and we use  this url and we'll follow these packages okay let's set this up quickly so we'll give  it a name so in this case my user of course   you can of course again give this whatever  name you want it doesn't really matter it's   just the host name and we say home manager  dot lib dot home manager com figuration some more squarely brackets let's close these  already we're again going to inherit the system   and in this case also packages because we want  to use next the next package manager don't forget   to close these the username is  of course your user on the system   now i'm going to write down here but if you want  to again set it up as a variable you can just as   easily set up let's add a user the username and  then you can of course use it in here as well and then a home directory also needed these  are also the default lines that are within   your home manager files so yeah  so that's equals home slash my name and the configuration is and for that we're going to import something and this can again be multiple files  that's why i am using these square brackets let's close this configuration  as well before i forget and here i can select again  whatever i want so i can say okay   home my name config slash and i think  it's now stored in nix packages home.nix   but again if you want to store this within a next  in a git repository maybe it's better to just   reference a file within the directory so like  this like home.nix so that's right quit let's copy   in this case from uh dot config next  packages home.nix we copy it over to here   and now we can rebuild this now for  this we're not going to rebuild it like uh pseudonyx oscar built switch flake and then  the host name that's not what we're going to do   especially not with home manager being set up  separately if we're going to use it separately   whoops have i not set it up written down here no  i hear so to build it in this case is just to say   nick's build and then we use that dot and  hashtag again and now we give it the name   of what we that we chose so in this case it was hm  config then i select my host in this case my name   and then activation package and this will build  a new directory with all the files for home   manager personally i'm not a fan actually of this  and there is also apparently something wrong here   unexpected follow oh yes i can i think i know  what is wrong so it is not follow but it is follows so do correct this yourself  i'm very sorry didn't see this before okay and there's another issue let's see here okay so in this case it doesn't allow me to  build the flag.log file and the reason is because   permission is denied so apparently it built it as  root i'm not sure why maybe that i accidentally   ran a comment as sudo where i didn't need  to but i'm going to change this to myself i'm actually not sure why this happened i think   i somewhere ran a command with  sudo but i didn't need to oh yes so now i should be able to  do it yeah let's try again is and then this error so we're  just debugging this a little bit   because there are a few things that  can cause issues so in this case   it gives another error and it tells me okay  your home dot state version is conflicting   and it tells me okay mine is 22.05 and in an  unknown file so we don't even know which file   it is it states 20.09 so that's an older  version so we need to force in this case our well or flake to use the correct version  so 22.05 in this case so let's go to flick   and let's actually add that here and what i can say is state version equals 22.05  and i'm not mistaken i think this is just how we   do it right quit build and now we don't get any  issues so yeah now it's built we don't get any   output here in the terminal but that's because  we now have a file or directory called results   so let's go in results and here we have actually  an activation script so this is where everything   from your home manager is now located and to  actually activate it we can do dot slash activate   and that activates the again the home manager  document so yeah that should all work fine now personally i'm not really a fan of building it  separately just because then you get another   directory you will have to run two commands so  you'll have to first say okay um what is it here so sudo nix rebuild switch flake and then host  name and then afterwards you'll also have to   run um this nix build configuration your host  that command then you'll have to go into results   and then within results you'll have to again  start that script from activation so that's a   lot of steps so personally i do not prefer  this but if you want to use it like this   that's your own personal preference i  do not use it like this what i do is i   go into flake.next and i use homemanager as a  module within configuration next configuration   so how do i do that well there's already  the dot here so what we can do is move that   down a bit and we are going to add another  module and this module will be home manager so how do we do that well let's go inside nixos  configuration so again for the inputs at the input   don't forget for the outputs to reference home  manager and then within the next os configuration   we are going to add this block of code yeah so  let's do that so home manager nixos modules.home manager let's add this before i forget and then home  manager dot use global packages so this tells   again that it needs to use these global packages  not it's not the packages from home manager   and i can say home manager dot use user  packages of course why would you not and then lastly homemanager.users and  then i can give my user that is used for   home manager so my user is in this case my name and this should be the user that you actually  have in your configuration.nix file of course   and then we can import this document so what  i can say now is okay import my home.nix file   and this is my preferred way because well now i can just say well i'll just type  it again say sudo nixos rebuild switch flake dot hashtag and then my name there we go and it does give me  a error and that is because i   again forgot an s so it's not import but imports but since it's already giving  this error it this means that   home manager is detecting it will work  yeah so it's building now here as well   perfect so that's how you do it as a module and  this will with one command update the system and   update home manager as well and rebuild everything  so that's that's the best way in my opinion great next up updating i guess maybe something i forgot  because i thought of it a minute ago so we had a   problem just a minute ago with the flake.lock  file being root and i can i do think i know   what the issue was in this case um i think i ran  like the the um what is it here there is a command   to actually generate your flag.log file i'm not  sure if i put it in here no but there is a command   to actually generate your log file and that's  something that you don't really need to run root   for and that's why i actually got the root version  because if you just rebuilt it will automatically   generate the flake.lock file and if you run run  that as root it will of course give it the the   root ownership but yeah that aside let's go  further if you want to update your flake so   i've shown you how to update like your  configuration files home manager and everything   but if you want to update your whole system  with a flake it's much easier because if you   work with nixos and with home manager separately  and you need to update on both you again need to   run two commands if you want to update your flake  so in this case if you use home manager and conf   and just a normal configuration.nix file in home  manager and in a flake you can just say okay next   flake update and this will update the whole  flake so it will look here for some updates   this could take some while it could take a while  but i don't think so because we already checked   for updates before yeah so it doesn't really  do anything in this case but this is how you   can update your flake it will update channels  everything within it inputs pretty much and it will then update here let's go and have a look  in flake.lock so this is what is getting updated   in this case so your root so for home manager  next packages um what else home manager so yeah   these things these are the core dependencies  that i mentioned before so these are updated   to the latest version so what is that well it's  the location um the commit revision so all these   things get updated and if you don't update this  as i said before and you build the system it will   build the system depending on the last commit id  here that is stated so that's how you always will   get the same version actually now after you've  updated it you can rebuild the system so now   with this new updated flake.lock file you can say  okay sudo rebuilds sudo nyx os rebuilds switch   flake and my host and of course there aren't  any updates so it doesn't do anything actually now once you're done with your flake and you've  set it up within github you don't really have   to do any of these steps anymore when you get  a new um installed on a new version with with   the live cd so that's pretty useful so let's say  we create a new virtual machine or when we start   on a new computer we can just boot into the iso  we can then go to terminal sudo su to get roots   in this case you can always work with  nix environment so we can then install   git and afterwards just get clone  the url to your repository and then   save it to a specific location in inside mnt of  course personally i do it always in m t slash at   c slash nixos where normally the configuration  files should be and again just like rebuilding   you can also say nixos install and then flake and  your host name so that's pretty neat in my opinion   so from the live cd you can always then install  with a flake so you don't have to add anything   special again or build it after you've set up  a basic configuration file so that's something   pretty useful in my opinion something to note and  that's a personal book i'm not sure if anyone else   is experiencing this but on my main desktop for  example if you build your system using your flake   and you have also generated the  default configuration.next file   do not forget to delete it after you're done with  building or installing your system because i've   noticed that if you leave your computer on for  a while it will randomly rebuild the defaults   next configuration.nix file so that's really  weird so i always delete that and after you've   rebuilt and you're in your system with the flag  then installed you can always just move that   file to your desired location so if that's in  config for example or just your home directory   don't forget to of course and change  your the ownership or you can just again clone the repository again that's a personal  choice of course so yeah that's pretty much it for   flakes it's pretty much everything you need to  know to set up and get started with your own   personal setup actually maybe something  i can show you now is my personal config i'll just skim over it a bit let's make this a  bit larger not sure why it's so small so mine   is for example located on the setup and well  this is my get document config isn't really   needed so i've set it up with two directories  and then my flake.nix and myflake.log file   so i store my configuration.nix file and  everything else inside these directories   and what i can do with flake.nix let's  go over this very quickly just so   yeah let's just see if you know what  everything now is because most of these things   we've seen in the last two hours so yeah or three  hours almost so first there's an input these are   of course like my channels i use just a  normal next package manager and home manager i   again use these for my outputs a few variables  that i have set is of course my system is 64-bit   my user i use a user variable is this if i  want to change it i can quickly change it   and it will apply for my whole system and for  all my different configs so that's useful here   again for my packages i want them to use  64-bit and of course allow unfree packages   and then from here i only add one thing and that's  my nexus configuration and i point to a host file   so i don't add my host here so as we did before  here you can say okay your host name and then   the rest of your code and just add a module i do  not do that i say import and then a specific file   and when i am going to this specific file well  it's a directory actually i also want to inherit   a few things so from next packages lib and then  also my inputs user system and home manager so   that means if i inherit these i can have towards  use them within this directory with the file   and evalu evaluate my documents that way so let's  go to hosts because this is a directory so how   can i point to a specific document then well  within hosts there is a default.nix file so if   you don't state a specific file it will always  go to the default.nix file and in here i again these are the specific things my  arguments to evaluate the document so   also user so i can actually use the user variable   home manager so i can actually use home manager  and then of course these for my system itself   and here are my hosts so this is actually what  we did before and what we write in our flake.nix   file but i've made it in a separate document  so there are three hosts here so desktop laptop   and vm and they are pretty much the same all  three they only just point to different locations   so in this case my i inherit the  system again i use specific arguments   so it will know of course how manager to use and  system to use in insight well my next os system   um but things like i've set myself like inputs or  user i will need to import these special arguments and the modules that i use are  my dot my desktop directory   and my configuration.nix file so configuration  next file in my setup is for all three hosts the   same so this is my configuration.nix file for all  three systems and these are all the same so these   are the things i will put in that i need for all  the different systems and if i need anything else   so specific things that i add to  configuration.next that are not   applicable to for example laptop i place  inside desktop in a desktop directory actually   i use so i don't really use like uh nexos home  manager separately i use it as an xos module   so as you can see here this is my module we've  seen this before and since i also want to use   my user variable i added this line so we haven't  seen this line yet but this means i can inherit   like the user variable again throughout my  system and for home manager i import a few   files so i import the general home.nix file so  again the file that is shared between all hosts   and then my specific home.next  file that is just specific to my   desktop so i won't go into the laptop and the vm  but i'll just go deeper into the desktop actually   so you know what it all is so let's go to desktop  in this case and then configuration.nix first   so configuration.nix is in the same location  this is the file that is shared between all   my different hosts and these are like  things that of course you need in every   setup so the time zone so my internationalization  so time zone my locale extra local settings   the console what keyboard layout i need if i need  lip input or not also i enable flat back here   fonts of course for the system so have a look  at these if you if you're not sure how to set   these things up just pause the video here and you  can copy them over if you want to because there's   not really a lot to explain it's just fonts  specific fonts that exist within next os and   then i also use not fonts to override a specific  font so this point has specific icons my user this is pretty may be pretty useful so security i really don't like to use sudo so i disable   the sudo password so i don't really need to  use it as a normal user allow on free packages then here for nix itself i enable optimize store  we've seen this before my garbage collection also   and then here again for the next next  flakes what i do is i keep all these things   these are some settings for  next flags itself on the system   maybe something useful that i haven't touched  on but yeah this is these are things that   pretty much everyone uses in the system so system  environment variables my terminal is alacrity   edit this new of him visual also near them  and it's maybe useful to use a variable in   this case so if you often change these you can  maybe change these for to specific variables   and then some packages that i have on every system  get get all kill all usb utils pci utils so yeah   that's the default things and i also allow auto  update this might not be too useful for flake   and maybe it's a bit against the ethos of a flake  but yeah so this update will update my channels   i don't really use these so it's not really  needed inside a flake because well the whole   point of a flake is that you can always rebuild  to the same state and the same version because   you s explicitly spin down the specific  git version or git commit so yeah so this   is not really needed i can pretty much delete  this i think um damn from here i point to my window manager i'll go to there in a minute   but before i go there i want to show my home.nix  file so this is again the general home.nix file   for my for all the different hosts i have  i import specific files so these are other   nex files and i keep them separate but you don't  have to so you can pretty much add everything   you want in here but since i like to keep my code  separate i create separate files and that means i   will have to import them as well there's nothing  special to these the only thing you then need to   do is again like modules create a directory  make a file with dot nics and then of course   don't forget if you need to need any arguments  to evaluate the document to add them at the top   but pretty much otherwise you just need these  squarely brackets and then put the extract code   in there and it should work fine i'll show  an example of this in in a minute actually   so in here of course my username home directory  specific packages i want for all my hosts   and yeah that's pretty much all the same  if you want to change your gtka team that's   something you can do as well change your mouse  all these settings all these settings can also   be found just within the appendix for home  manager and of course the website on nixos   and one thing i do here as well is this so this  is as i mentioned for not only dot files but   also just general files like my wallpaper i use  home.file and i say okay save my wallpaper to   config wall and why is that because well nixos  uses this location for a default wallpaper   so i source a document and this  document is always saved within my flake   at this location it will then be  sim linked to dot config slash wall let's go to desktop and this is  my specific no i'm wrong yeah so   this is my it it goes to default because i  didn't really state a configuration.nix file   but this is pretty much the part of my host so the  host is in this case my desktop this is the part   um for configuration.nix so these are some  extra things i import again a few things   i set my kernel to the atest package my video  drivers kernel module for the video cards   i set my boot to system d boot because i don't  double boot my configuration limits to five   and i've also set up set a timeout for one  second so i don't have to wait too long   or have to press enter actually on my group menu i set up a static ip address so if you don't know  how to do that that's here and if you can remember   it's for me it's here in configuration.nix but for  you it may be is now in uh hardware.com hardware   configuration.nix so yeah that's how you do  that i have my default gateway names names   name server some specific packages that i set up  here and the reason why i set up some packages   system-wide here is because home manager  doesn't have an option for these so these   are only things that i can configure using  the nixos options so that's why they are here   here's my overlay for discord we've  seen that uh something else may be   useful for your configuration is  sane so sane is used for scanning maybe something useful you can do is have a look  at uh the wiki so let's just quickly go here   so if you search for nixos.wiki and a wiki main  page you can for example search for scanning and there is a wiki page for scanners and here it  will explain okay what do you need for scanning so   it tells you okay you need to add hardware saying  enable um it tells me i need to add these two   extra to my user so these groups and then  there's a lot more information for the specific printers you have so in this case if you  have hp printer you can add this package   since i have a canon printer i there aren't  really any specific drivers so i just use sane   air scan so this works for a lot of scanners for  a lot of printers actually um bluetooth blueman   of course for printing just the same there are  some wiki pages um for me the drivers for my   printer are these so don't forget to change these  to yours and then i also use avayi a vice used   to just detect your printer and your scanner  and it will often even set it up automatically   if you if they are there are the correct drivers  but yeah um if not you just have to use cups   but yeah samba for file sharing locally i share  my home folder this is how you can do that as well   there you go so just copy this if you if you want  to have these things uh plex yes my oh yes my   video drivers in this case i also on the x server  i had my video drivers so in this case amd gpu   uh of course for nvidia i think this will be just  nuveau or whatever but have a look at the at the   nexus wiki again it will probably be in there  for my display manager i've set up a quick script   this is for my desktop so if i have only one  display connected it will use this if you use   two it runs this command every time on boot so  yeah that's pretty useful and one thing to maybe   know if you are going to use like commands in  this case i'm using a is just sh so bash script   um it will probably work if you just say x render  output and whatever but this will sometimes   not work actually and then you will have to point  to the correct location inside the next store so   as i mentioned there isn't a real bin directory  so it's pretty hard to find x render in this case   luckily you don't really need to know where it is  located within the next store and the next door as   i mentioned is huge so how to find it well it is  built in to this config file so you can use these   random variables and in this case it will search  for the package xorg dot x render within the next   store and this will be added to this command  actually so x render will probably work but   in this case it will actually give the full  address to bin dot x render in the next store   and then here this is just so my screen doesn't   automatically goes to sleep and then the  default resolutions um for x server so yeah and maybe one more thing i want to show you oh yes  before i do let me quickly go over here so imports   so in this case it's a module but if you are  going to import things and it's a specific   next file so maybe this is not a good example for  example here so imports within configuration.next   and also home manager if you're going to import  this all works fine so let's say where's my cursor   there let's say i want to add something else  so i have here now a document called bspwm.nix if i want to import something else so modules  desktop let's say i made an xfce.nix file so this all works fine the problem is  as i mentioned just a few minutes ago   if you're going to mention a specific directory with a default  next document this can cause some issues so   probably this won't but if  you're going to use nested   imports or whatever this can cause some  issues so what you will do have to do dan   and i'm not really going to explain in detail but  i will show you and you will pretty much know when   this occurs this error because it will tell  you so if so in this case i could use like   squared brackets and just say import  this so hopper configuration media.nix   and x11vnc and then close my squared brackets  and that works fine but if i then also add just   virtualization which then points to a directory  and it will then use default.nix it will give an   error so to fix that we are going to manually  import everything separately so in this case   import this configuration.nix and we use them  parentheses or rounded brackets with the squared   brackets around it plus and then the next one  and the square brackets are not needed for um   these because we are pointing to a directory  so that's not needed here so if you get an   error with imports try to set something up like  this if you use multiple files it's just a tip but in this case so i import also from modules  so here are all my modules so everything that i   don't want to save in my configuration.nix   or my home.nix file i store here just  to make everything a bit cleaner and to   find things much easier so one of the  things for example that gets imported is   a directory in this case if we point to services  it will point to default. default nics and here   i tell it okay import these specific files within  the directory so i haven't mentioned media because   that's imported somewhere else but it is also  present here but it's not added to default so   it won't be used from where this is coming so this  is coming from services modules so this is coming   from home.nix so since media is probably coming  from my configuration.nix and not from home.nix i can't really use that one but then in here it's  pretty much the same with any of these so you just   follow uh the same syntax so  from nixos or from the appendix   from home manager you can set all these  things up and store them as separate files so i will just quickly skim over these that's it's  not really anything special of note actually here   but if you want to have a look at this setup i  will also link this in the description so my my   configuration files so yeah that's pretty  much everything i had to tell hopefully   you're a bit wiser now and you know what to do   um if you have any questions um you can leave  them in the comments below i will try to help   maybe some other people are maybe more advanced  than me can also help you in the comments   um i wish you at least the best of luck  with your next os journey um and again   there are a lot of resources i haven't visited  all of these in the video now but i will also   again put these in the description so thanks  for following this mini-course and best of luck

Channel: Matthias Benaets

Views: 71,825

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Id: AGVXJ-TIv3Y

Length: 181min 38sec (10898 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 11 2022