r/NixOS

I've been on nixos about a week and I have been very impressed and even leaning towards this as the distro to end my hopping.

I'm getting frustrated with fonts though, something some of the other distros handle out of the box so well.

All other issues like this I have been able to research and easily implement a solution for but with fonts I am stuck.

The font rendering on reddit.com in the brave browser is especially bad.

I've got the right fonts installed in my config and even comparing using dev tools on a machine using same fonts it just looks really bad on nixos.

 fonts.packages = with pkgs; [
   nerd-fonts.jetbrains-mono
   pkgs.adwaita-fonts
   pkgs.cantarell-fonts
   liberation_ttf
   noto-fonts
   noto-fonts-color-emoji
   noto-fonts-cjk-serif
   noto-fonts-cjk-sans
   nerd-fonts.droid-sans-mono
 ];

I'm using KDE but I'm not sure it matters. I cannot be the only one that has experienced this so I am asking on here to see what suggestions I can hopefully receive before I continue my hopping.

edit: here is screenshot for example

https://preview.redd.it/18692a2avdkh1.png?width=727&format=png&auto=webp&s=eb51db0ddc92dbe0e376382d83da384767b161db

So, I have home-manager flake config on my personal NixOs machine. And I have no-internet rootless-user develop server at work. The only way to interact with it is ssh. How to copy home-manager environment to that server in a cleanest way?

Ideally I want to run home-manager switch --flake . on that server to "install" all the things so I still able to manage generations.

What I've already done is nix pm installed and running through proot. What I've tried is nix-store --export on home-manager and its activation package and nix-store --import on restricted machine. But this way I can only run /nix/store/...-home-manager-generation/activate and it's bad because it doesn't handle generations, hard to update and too much to be done manually. And for whatever reason home-manager switch still tries to download things on github though I've imported everything it needs to the store.

Is there some way to JUST copy home manager and all my programs so I can manage it like I do on my machine?

I just recently moved to nixos and im still learning but the weird thing is that when i installed coolercontrol it said my fans were read only, I can't seem to see anything in the config that would fix that and I can't find my laptop's model on nbfc.

Olá pessoal, sou um novo usuário do NixOS!

Então, quais são as diferenças entre usar o NixOS e usar outras distribuições com Nix?

Obrigado pela atenção :)

Edit: Not reffering to a fork of NixOS (like SnowflakeOS), but using a distro like Arch or Fedora with Nix.

Should we expect no timely maintenance and upgrades for the core packages for the time being?

Forgive me if anything here sounds disjointed since I don't have experience with running AI models other than Gemini's web interface.

Do you have a dev shell flake that would require just a cd into the directory and run nix develop?

Hi everyone, I have a question about nixOS, specifically regarding battery consumption. In 2024, I bought a Samsung Book 4, which I thought was great since it was for computer engineering, studying, compiling, etc. With 16GB of RAM and a 13th Gen i7, it was going to be more than enough. I didn't like that Windows consumed 8GB of RAM, so I switched to Linux with EOS. I really liked Pacman and how easy it is to download various things from the AUR. Battery consumption had improved, but even so, sometimes it didn't last me the whole day (sometimes I'd start class at 8 AM and stay until 6:20 PM), and I'd have to charge it. I switched to vanilla Arch Linux, and while the battery consumption was somewhat lower, it wasn't by much. I realized the "problem" was systemd because of the background services, C-wakeups, etc. I learned about void and tried it on a secondary computer and I liked runit. Then I learned about artix and that it had different init systems and I liked dinit the most and that's what I'm currently using, artix with dinit.

Part of the reason I also switched from systemd was because I didn't really like the age verification, but I'm not refusing to use it.

So, my question is, how manageable is systemd in NixOS? According to AI, since NixOS is declarative, services are also declared, so when installing something, or during installation, it doesn't come with as many active services as, for example, EOS.

I don't mind learning the nix language; in fact, it's one of the things I enjoy. But I have a dual boot setup, and I don't like messing with the partitions too much, especially because Windows might get corrupted, and that would be bad. So I don't want the installation to be a waste, especially since I'd have to reinstall artix, and I don't want to.

Sorry for any spelling mistakes or inconsistencies, I'm Chilean and I'm learning English little by little; I can read better than I write. I already have it working; it hasn't broken or anything, but the dual boot setup was a bit of a struggle because GRUB wouldn't detect Windows, and then it would detect Windows but not artix until I finally managed to fix it.

Finally made the move, what tips did you guys wish you knew when you first used it?

So, basically, I’m cloning and modifying around 60% of the apps I use, plus 2 drivers, mostly for study purposes. The 60% of apps I’m modifying are all offline apps.

I’m wondering if this is going way too far, or if there’s actually some value in approaching things this way. On one hand, I feel like understanding the internals by actually modifying the software is a much deeper learning experience than just reading the source code, and it also makes me less dependent on third-party code. On the other hand, I’m starting to wonder if I’m just reinventing the wheel for no real benefit.

My idea with my configuration is to customize it so that most of the apps can work together and integrate with each other, creating a more cohesive personal workflow that is also easier to maintain.

I've used Windows most of my life, but around 6 months ago I switched to Project Bluefin and I've been happy with it.

What I like most about Bluefin is the clean, image-based approach. The base system is mostly left alone, while apps and tools live in Flatpaks, containers, Homebrew, etc. I like keeping things separated instead of constantly modifying the host system.

Recently I've started looking at NixOS.

I'm not completely new to Linux. I've worked with Linux systems before, but I definitely wouldn't call myself an expert. I'm aware that NixOS has a learning curve, and I'm fine with that if there is a real benefit to it.

What appeals to me about NixOS is:

• Declarative configuration and keeping my system config in Git
• Reproducibility and knowing what is actually installed/configured
• Generations and rollbacks if I mess something up
• Keeping Flatpak for sandboxed GUI applications where it makes sense
• Using Nix/Home Manager for CLI tools and configuration
• Using containers when actual container isolation is useful
• Having much more freedom to customize the system than I currently do on Bluefin

One thing that's especially appealing is having a known system state. On more traditional systems I sometimes worry that I've accidentally changed, deleted, or configured something incorrectly. I've even reinstalled an OS before simply because I wasn't sure whether everything was still configured correctly.

NixOS seems like it could help with that. I could keep a known-good configuration in Git, see exactly what I've changed, test changes, and roll back if something goes wrong.

At the same time, one of Bluefin's biggest strengths is that I don't really have to think about the OS. Drivers, firmware, updates, security defaults, desktop integration, and most of the underlying setup are already taken care of.

So I'm wondering whether NixOS actually sounds like a good fit for me, or whether I'd mainly be trading Bluefin's simplicity for additional maintenance.

For those using NixOS as a daily desktop, how much maintenance does it realistically require once your configuration is set up? And does the declarative/rollback model actually make experimenting with the system feel safer in practice?

https://preview.redd.it/zka3xd3cy4kh1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=fa7e5dc52825c6d38a19d3a386c7fad6c2628fe9

neither my cursor is changing nor the dark mode is working. what should i do?

currently, in my flake i'm using github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable for my nixpkgs.url, this means that when github is down, I cannot update my system and generally cannot make certain changes to my config.

are there any good ways to set this up with some form of failover? I'd like to not be fully reliant on github considering their uptime is an absolute joke for a site of that scope (99.22% right now!)