❄️ Ryan4Yin's Nix Config ❄️

My configuration is becoming more and more complex, and it will be difficult for beginners to read. If you are new to NixOS and want to know how I use NixOS, I would recommend you to take a look at the ryan4yin/nix-config/releases first, check out to some simpler older versions, such as i3-kickstarter, which will be much easier to understand.

This repository is home to the Nix code that builds all of my systems:

1. NixOS desktops — Home Manager, Niri (Wayland), the Noctalia shell, agenix.
2. macOS desktops — nix-darwin + Home Manager, sharing the same home/ configuration with the NixOS desktops.
3. NixOS servers — three physical mini PCs running the VMs (libvirt and microVMs), the K3s test cluster and the self-hosted services.

See ./hosts for the host inventory, ./outputs for how the flake outputs are composed, ./BACKUP.md for the backup design, and ./AGENTS.md for the repository conventions.

Why NixOS & Flakes?

Nix allows for easy-to-manage, collaborative, reproducible deployments. This means that once something is setup and configured once, it works (almost) forever. If someone else shares their configuration, anyone else can just use it (if you really understand what you're copying/referring now).

As for Flakes, refer to Introduction to Flakes - NixOS & Nix Flakes Book

Want to know NixOS & Flakes in detail? Looking for a beginner-friendly tutorial or best practices? You don't have to go through the pain I've experienced again! Check out my NixOS & Nix Flakes Book - 🛠️ ❤️ An unofficial & opinionated 📖 for beginners!

If you're using macOS, check out ryan4yin/nix-darwin-kickstarter for a quick start.

Components

	NixOS (Wayland)
Display Manager	greetd + tuigreet
Window Manager	Niri
Desktop Shell	Noctalia — bar/notifications/launcher/lock screen/control center/power menu/screenshots, one native shell
Terminal Emulators	Kitty, Ghostty
Terminal Multiplexer	tuios
Shell	Nushell + Starship
Editors / IDE	Zed (GUI, primary), VS Code (GUI); Helix (TUI, primary), Neovim (TUI, backup)
Color Scheme	catppuccin-nix
Networking	systemd-networkd / NetworkManager
Input Method	Fcitx5 + rime + 小鹤音形 flypy
System Monitor	Btop (+ Noctalia's built-in sysmon widgets)
File Manager	Yazi (TUI) + thunar (GUI)
Media Player	mpv
Image Viewer	imv
Screenshots	Native Noctalia capture: region / fullscreen / display picker, with a built-in annotation editor
Screen Recording	OBS, gpu-screen-recorder, wf-recorder
Fonts	Nerd fonts
Filesystem & Encryption	tmpfs as /, Btrfs subvolumes on a LUKS encrypted partition for persistent data; unlock via passphrase
Secure Boot	lanzaboote

Wallpapers: https://github.com/ryan4yin/wallpapers

Screenshots

Editors / IDE

• Terminal editors: ./home/base/core/editors/ — Helix / Neovim, $EDITOR, docs.
• GUI editors: Zed (primary) and VS Code.
• LLM coding agents: ./agents — rules, installers, CLI snippets; see ./agents/README.md.

Secrets Management

See ./secrets for details.

Security & Hardening

See ./SECURITY.md for the threat model, security architecture, controls and audit status, ./hardening/README.md for application sandboxing and Linux hardening, and ./WORKAROUNDS.md for temporary exceptions and known gaps.

How to Deploy this Flake?

🔴 IMPORTANT: You should NOT deploy this flake directly on your machine ❗ It will not succeed. This flake contains my hardware configuration (such as hardware-configuration.nix, Nvidia support, etc.) which is not suitable for your hardware, and requires my private secrets repository ryan4yin/nix-secrets to deploy. You may use this repo as a reference to build your own configuration.

Updating flake inputs and rolling the result out safely is a procedure, not a single command. Follow .agents/skills/nix-config-update/SKILL.md.

For NixOS:

To deploy this flake from NixOS's official ISO image (purest installation method), please refer to ./nixos-installer/

# Desktops: deploy the <hostname>-niri nixosConfiguration (e.g. ai-niri, shoukei-niri)
just niri           # equals `sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#<hostname>-niri`
just niri boot      # set as the next boot configuration without switching
just niri switch debug  # detailed output

# Other hosts (servers, VMs): deploy the nixosConfiguration matching the bare hostname
just local
just local boot
just local switch debug

For macOS (nix-darwin):

# If you are deploying for the first time,
# 1. install nix & homebrew manually.
# 2. prepare the deployment environment with essential packages available
nix-shell -p just nushell
# 3. comment home-manager's code in lib/macosSystem.nix to speed up the first deployment.

# Deploy the darwinConfiguration by hostname match (fern, frieren)
just local
just local debug  # detailed output (macOS has no switch/boot mode)

Remote / cluster hosts are deployed with Colmena on top of the same flake, e.g. just col <tag>, just k3s-test, just lab.

What y'all will need when Nix drives you to drink. (copy from hlissner's dotfiles, it really matches my feelings when I first started using NixOS...)

Validation & Development

nix develop provides the formatters and linters used by the repository. The most useful commands:

just test    # eval tests across Linux & Darwin; the output must be `true`
just fmt     # format all Nix files with nixfmt
just --list  # all recipes

nix flake check   # broader flake checks

For Nix changes, run just test and inspect just fmt's diff before committing. Non-Nix files are formatted with prettier; spelling is checked with typos.

References

Other dotfiles that inspired me:

• Nix Flakes
  • NixOS-CN/NixOS-CN-telegram
  • notusknot/dotfiles-nix
  • xddxdd/nixos-config
  • bobbbay/dotfiles
  • gytis-ivaskevicius/nixfiles
  • davidtwco/veritas
  • gvolpe/nix-config
  • Ruixi-rebirth/flakes
  • fufexan/dotfiles: gtk theme, xdg, git, media, etc.
  • nix-community/srvos: a collection of opinionated and sharable NixOS configurations for servers
• Modularized NixOS Configuration
  • hlissner/dotfiles
  • viperML/dotfiles
• Neovim / AstroNvim
  • maxbrunet/dotfiles: astronvim with nix flakes.
• Misc
  • 1amSimp1e/dots