🖥️ NixOS & Home-Manager Dotfiles

My personal NixOS configuration featuring multiple hosts and modern development setups.

Warning: These configs are highly opinionated - use as inspiration, not copy-paste!

🚀 Usage

🧩 Neovim Configuration

nix run github:rayslash/dotfiles#nvimcat
# OR use following for a minimal config
nix run github:rayslash/dotfiles#nvim-minimal

📀 Live ISO Generation

Build bootable ISO with live nixos host configuration:

nix build .#images.x86_64
nix build .#images.rpi-live

🛠️ System Installation

⚠️ Important: Replace all <host> occurrences with your actual hostname. Same applies for /dev/sdX devices as well.

Fresh Install Procedure:

# Partitioning
sudo fdisk /dev/sdX  # Create required partitions
sudo mount /dev/sdXX /mnt  # Mount root partition
sudo mount /dev/sdXX /mnt/boot  # Mount boot
sudo mount /dev/sdXX /mnt/nix  # Mount nix

# Configuration Setup
git clone https://github.com/RaySlash/nixos-config /mnt/etc/nixos
rm /mnt/etc/nixos/systems/<host>/hardware-configuration.nix
sudo nixos-generate-config --root /mnt
sudo cp /mnt/etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix /mnt/etc/nixos/systems/<host>/

# Final Installation
sudo nixos-install --flake .#<host>

🧠 Philosophy

Core Principles:

• 🔌 Explicit Wiring: Configurations are directly referenced via absolute paths - no implicit file tree crawling

• 📚 Layered Composition: Modules set defaults that can be cleanly overridden:

  # modules/kitty/default.nix
  { lib, ... }: {
    programs.kitty = {
      enable = lib.mkDefault true;  # Default that can be disabled
      defaultTerminal = lib.mkDefault true;
    };
  }
  
  # hosts/myhost/default.nix
  { lib, ... }: {
    programs.kitty = {
      # Explicit override of default
      defaultTerminal = false;
    };
  }

• 🧰 Utility-First: Abstract common patterns into repo-specific functions:

  # utils/lib.nix
  { inputs }:
  {
  inherit
    mkPkgs
    mkHome
    mkSystem
    ;
  }

• 🚫 Anti-Pattern Rejection:

  • No automatic inclusion of ./hosts/*.nix
  • No magic "profiles" directory
  • No recursive config discovery (except when explicitly enabled)

Zero-Magic Plug & Play Architecture:

# Anti-pattern vs Our Approach
# Instead of implicit path resolution:
./users/${user}/home.nix

# We use explicit composition:
mkHome {
  system = "x86_64-linux";
  modules = [ ./hosts/myhost ];
}

Implementation Guardrails

1. Host Declaration:

   mkSystem {
     system = "aarch64-linux";
     modules = [
       ./hosts/myhost
       specialFeatureModule.default
     ];
   }

2. Home-Manager Activation:

   mkHome {
     user = "devuser";
     modules = [
       ./hosts/myhost
       customAliasesModule.myModule
     ];
   }

"Configs should be obvious, not clever" i.e., Direct file references > Convention over configuration

🔗 Resources

• 🧩 Starter Config - Flake template foundation
• 📦 Nixpkgs - Official package repository
• 📚 NixOS Wiki - Community-maintained knowledge base
• 🖥️ Hyprland Wiki - Window manager documentation

🖼️ Screenshots