edit:
I've updated & expanded the list (finished for today)
Install and learn Rust, and then reimplement something in Rust
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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Linux
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- Stylix to have consistent theme
- Nixvim to configure nvim using nix
- For emacs there is nix-doom-emacs-unstraightened but I've not tried it and I would recommend trying Doom Emacs first
- devenv for per project nix managed dev environments
- nixd for nix lsp
That's all I can think about that's unique to nix. The rest is about configuring your DE, WM, terminal, shell, apps… how you like it like in any other distro, just through nix instead.
I use nix-doom-emacs-unstraightened for org-mode and ledger-mode, although I think it expects you to use elisp for most of the configuration so it's not as integrated with Nix. Second devenv (with flake-parts), nixd, and stylix. There's also flakes for Niri and DMS for window manager + shell.
NixOS synergises very well with terminal command aliases, you should check what commands you frequently use and put those into the config as well.
Good point. I forgot to add that to my list but I did make one alias reflake for sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake ~/nixos-dotfiles#nixos-werecat After I had to type this out for IDK how many times (and forgot about CTRL+R) it quickly got annoying :)
Now that you mentioned Ctrl+R, also check out program named atuin. It makes the command search a bit more friendly, and you can also optionally sync command history. It has NixOS options, of course.
IDK why the Atuin config file that got generated is commented out in it's entirety and nothing works. Right now I can't be bothered to go trough the entire config and enable things one by one. From what I've tried nothing works and IDK why. CTRL+R does not invoke the Atuin search it still invokes the old one. I uncommented everything and still nothing seems to work. The atuin definitely responds to my commands in terminal though. I did run atuin setup as well.
edit: OK, I've spent another 30min+ on this and I still can't understand why it does not work. I've adjusted config, even got a custom config from other users and I can't seem to be able to invoke it in the terminal besides using it's commands which are the only thing that seem to work. I was able to make an account and login via terminal as well.
edit2:
Figured it out! I've tried mcfly and encountered the same issue. Turns out I needed to edit .bashrc which is read only even for sudo and even after chmod. So after beating my head against a wall I’ve realized that .bashrc is symlinked to my home.nix and that's where I need to place my edits. So now mcfly runs fine and I'm assuming Atuin would as well since after looking at github I pretty much had to do the same edit for both.
You don't need to add mcfly bash integration to your .bashrc manually. Remove it from home.packages and instead enable the home-manager module with programs.mcfly.enable = true;. That's all you need to do, it has a enableBashIntegration setting that's true by default. Same for atuin, programs.atuin.enable = true; is enough.
It's an habit you have to learn when switching to nix, check first if there is a module for the program you want to install before resorting to home.packages or environment.systemPackages.
I thought that I've already replied but apparently not... Thanks for this. I did not realize it's this simple. Looks like I've found one of the many instances where I can make this work differently while it may not be optimal to do so :)
Maybe look into something like impermanence and having root on tmpfs. It’s what made NixOS really “click” for me.
I tried root on tmpfs with Guix once and I kept running into RAM limitations, especially when building large programs. For NixOS, I use BTRFS and their script to clear the root filesystem on reboot (although I had to do some extra steps since I had systemd enabled for initrd)
This looks quite interesting but I honestly can't think of any use case where I would find this useful for me. Also this seems like something best to try in VM first. I'll keep this one in a bookmark though, may become useful later. Thanks!
impermanence forces you to be intentional with your system, where files are persisted, which is great for: hygiene like feeling like the computer was freshly formatted on each boot; using NixOS as intended by keeping things declarative (in other words, "nixmaxxing"); security also, to a lesser extent tbh, but it'd be protecting against malware nesting at impermanent paths
I get it but for now I find this to be a bit too overly declarative for my taste. For now I'll focus on things that actually matter for my use case but as I've said. I'm bookmarking this to try later in VM.
whatever works for you! no need to do stuff just for the sake of it and its already great youre exploring nix
That's what I like about OpenWrt, every update wipes everything but what's explicitly configured. And the first update that doesn't break anything is a rela satisfaction, meaning your whole configuration is contained in a few files listed somewhere
Try ~~VIM~~ Emacs instead of Nano ;)
Can also try helix! I think there is another one called kakoune but I haven't followed that for a long time
If you use Helix, use the nightly version from their flake since it has like a year's worth of updates compared to the last release. Or use Steelix if you want early access to plugin support.
Yeah Helix is cool. I was using it before i switched to Emacs.
I've already tried Helix quite a while ago. I went trough the entire bult-in tutorial and then never touched it again because I had no reason to back then. I'd have to start everything from scratch which is why I want to try something else now.
I know enough to know that this is blue vs red situation but not enough to know why. But your comment will likely start a war in this post soon :D
Lives have been lost in this war, but you’d be crazy to think that Emacs is not the superior editor. (Half /s)
Haha, yeah i'm just goofing around, but at the end of the day, just choose what is most interesting to you. It's kind of ironic how i got into Emacs anyway, cause before that i chose to use Helix instead of NVIM, cause i didn't want to bother spending so much time configuring it. Then i tried Guix, which is a distro that you configure in Guile Scheme, so Emacs felt like the perfect fit for that, but in the end i still spent hours configuring my Emacs lol.
I have an endless list of configuration changes to make, but security hardening with nix-mineral and impermanence, and using den to organize if you have a lot of hosts/users are options I recommend. Also if you have a spare laptop lying around, I use that for hacky NixOS experimentation. I also want to switch my homelab to NixOS + MicroVM.nix + OpenTofu, and possibly Kubernetes.
Tailscale is pretty straightforward because they have a config for it baked in, pretty sure it's just services.tailscale.enable = true. But if you use it with the operator=$USER setting, note that you still need to run tailscale with sudo for your initial login before that works properly
Is there a single thing nix does that isnt easier to do with a simple bash script applied over whatever your favorite distro is? Reproducible builds is all that comes to mind
Some things you could do is apply theming in an autistic nix way, configure some services to auto run and setup monitoring and reporting for them.
Yes, just enabling a service or program is one line in nix but the module behind can do a lot of things (install the package, create and enable the systemd service file, install and setup any db if needed or other service dependencies, set some default settings…). For some service that would be quite the bash script.
Also theming in nix is very easy for the apps supported by Stylix.
If you're just using it to declare packages and some configs then yeah you could definitely run like a post-install script or something on top of a minimal distro. I've done this for a while when i was using Void. It's get trickier though when you consider that nix can also lock your config at a specific version of all the software you have installed, which i don't think can easily be done on the average distro. There's also the rollbacks, though i suppose you could use btrfs for that, but i've never tried it.
From my very short experience so far. It really depends on how deep you want to go and what your use case is. If you just want to install applications and use them then it's not really any different than installing them via terminal on other distros. You just make a list of the app names in a config file and then rebuild and can go about your day.
If I'd wanted to use my laptop with NixOS as my Fedora desktop then I'd be done setting it up 5min after I've installed the system. The only time I touch terminal on my Fedora system is when I turn on PC and check for updates because it's faster than waiting for Software to refresh.
Probably the biggest benefit other than reproducibility is that you get immutability without reliance on flatpaks.
Actually using the OS and not thinking about it instead of tinkering with it constantly and wondering what to change.
The whole point of me trying NixOS is to tinker with the configs and learning how it works and also learning some of the other skills that go with that. If I just wanted to use the laptop then there is no difference vs my Fedora desktop setup because it's also GNOME 50 running the same applications.
It's working! Also good point with Codeberg, I forgot that Github is under MS. https://codeberg.org/WereCat/nixos-dotfiles.git
Have you considered using your computer as a computer instead of configuring it?
No. Who does that?
People who don't run nixos.
But then you're missing out on a lot of incredible things like a sleep deprivation for instance.
Try Micro which is apparently based off of MicroEmacs lol