❄️ nix-config

Personal Nix flake for my Linux desktops (with room for macOS later). It keeps system and home configuration in one place, driven by small feature flags and a Wayland-first desktop stack.

Why Nix and NixOS

• Manage system, desktop, and development environments as code rather than ad‑hoc tweaks.
• Avoid “configuration black holes” by making everything reproducible and rebuildable from scratch.
• Gain a clean, predictable package management story and project‑local environments that are easy to recreate.

Configuration philosophy

• Express all system and user configuration declaratively through Nix; avoid imperative one‑off commands.
• Prefer concentrating configuration and packages at the user level via Home Manager, so most of your setup can be reproduced even on non‑NixOS systems.
• Keep the base system small and uncluttered, without preinstalled language runtimes or heavy dev stacks.
• Use per‑project Nix dev shells, auto‑activated via direnv, as the primary way to provide development tooling.
• If a project has no dev shell, define one in a parent directory; fall back to containers for projects that are painful to model in Nix.
• Aim for configurations that are minimal, clean, and fully reproducible across machines.

Desktop preferences

• Prefer a window manager over a full desktop environment to keep things simple and loosely coupled.
• Use a keyboard‑driven workflow with keybindings for most common actions.
• Make the terminal and an application launcher the core of the desktop experience.
• Avoid unnecessary applications; favor lightweight TUI tools over heavy GUI apps and use web apps where they make sense.
• Keep the bar minimal and focused, showing only information that matters in daily use; redundant items belong in the launcher, not on the bar.
• Concentrate bar elements toward the top‑right to stay out of the way and reduce visual noise.
• Treat aesthetics as “calm and coherent enough,” preferring simple, harmonious visuals over flashy themes.

Screenshots

Repo layout

• flake.nix: Entrypoint using flake-parts, overlays, and a custom package set mypkgs.
• hosts/: Per-machine definitions combining system modules + home-manager modules and user metadata.
• modules/: Reusable building blocks
  • system/: NixOS modules (desktop, peripherals, stylix, secure boot, graphics, etc.)
  • home/: Home Manager modules (shell, editor, terminal, Wayland apps, theming)
• options/: Custom feature flags (niri, walker, waybar, sunshine, nvidia, lanzaboote, etc.).
• overlays/: Overlays for pkgs.
• pkgs/: Custom packages and assets.

Host profiles

• hasty-desktop: Daily driver with NVIDIA, secure boot via lanzaboote, greetd + niri session, waybar, walker, Thunar, Sunshine for remote desktop.
• vmware-desktop: VM-oriented variant sharing the same Wayland stack (niri + walker + waybar + greetd + Thunar + Sunshine) without the NVIDIA/secure-boot bits.

Desktop & user stack

• WM/session: Niri from niri-flake, Wayland-first environment variables baked in.
• Greeter/session start: greetd (SDDM optional toggle).
• Bar & launcher: Waybar with custom styling, Walker launcher.
• Lock & idle: swaylock; swayidle available via flag.
• Input/IME: fcitx5.
• Notifications/OSD: mako + avizo volume/brightness OSD.
• Display rules: kanshi for multi-monitor profiles.
• File manager: Thunar.
• Remote desktop: Sunshine toggle.
• Theming: Stylix plus curated wallpapers/icons in pkgs/assets.
• CLI base: zsh + starship, zellij, direnv, git defaults, fzf, custom package set in modules/home/share.

Neovim

Neovim is enabled via Home Manager and sources my external config (inputs.nvim-config, repo: TangSiyang2001/diy.nvim) directly into ~/.config/nvim. Extra build/runtime deps are pre-wrapped (nixd, lua-language-server, stylua, nixfmt, statix, deadnix, rg, fzf, shellcheck/shfmt, sql/toml/yaml/markdown/Actions tooling) so LSPs, formatters, and Telescope work out of the box.

Custom options

See options/default.nix for feature switches like custom.linux.desktop.wm.niri.enable, custom.linux.desktop.bar.waybar.enable, custom.nixos.graphics.nvidia.enable, custom.nixos.secureBoot.lanzaboote.enable, custom.nixos.desktop.remoteDesktop.sunshine.enable, etc. Hosts compose these to turn features on/off per machine.

Using nh

Prereqs: flakes enabled, nh installed (e.g., nix profile install nixpkgs#nh). Run from the repo root:

# Switch a host
nh os switch . #hostname

# Dry-run/test
nh os test . #hostname

For new machines, clone the repo, pick/create a host under hosts/nixos/, adjust feature flags in globalOptions, then run nh os switch with the matching .#hostname.

Acknowledgements

• ryan4yin/nix-config: many configurations were adapted from here.
• niksingh710/ndots: the flake layout inspired how this repo is organized.
• vimjoyer: his YouTube videos taught me many core Nix concepts.
• nix-community/lanzaboote: solved secure boot alongside Windows in my dual-boot setup.
• hercules-ci/flake-parts: helped structure my flake more like real software engineering.
• sodiboo/niri-flake: made the Niri configuration straightforward and reproducible.
• basecamp/omarchy: drew from its Linux desktop aesthetic and borrowed two favorite wallpapers.