Nikita's NixOS Dotfiles

My minimalistic dotfiles, with just the tools that I really use. Some of my thoughts on NixOS:

• NixOS is my favorite way to manage configurations, because the entire system can be configured from just a single file: configuration.nix
• What's especially awesome, is that I can configure about:config values and extensions for Firefox in firefox.nix. This lets me have the same browser across every single computer!
• I feel like NixOS is a cheat code, it's impossible for my computer to ever break. If something has gone wrong, I can just boot into a configuration from yesterday and continue being productive.
• Since it's available on Mac, I'm not locked into using NixOS. I can use other linux distros as well as MacOS.
• Setting up a new computer with all of my configs takes literally just 10 minutes, most of which is waiting for stuff to install. Oh my god!

Installation Instructions

If you aren't, connect to wifi by following these steps from the installation media:

Find out SSID and INTERFACE with:

iwlist scan | grep ESSID && ip link

Generate WiFi configuration and connect to wifi:

wpa_passphrase SSID PASSWORD > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
wpa_supplicant -B -i INTERFACE -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Partitioning

Partition drives:

sgdisk -Z -n1:0:+512M -t1:ef02 -c1:boot \
       -N2 -t2:8309 -c2:root /dev/sdX

Luks setup:

cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/disk/by-partlabel/root
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/disk/by-partlabel/root cryptroot

Set up logical volumes:

pvcreate /dev/mapper/cryptroot
vgcreate vg /dev/mapper/cryptroot
lvcreate -L 8G -n swap vg
lvcreate -l '100%FREE' -n root vg

Format partitions:

mkfs.fat /dev/disk/by-partlabel/boot
mkfs.ext4 -L root /dev/vg/root
mkswap -L swap /dev/vg/swap

Main Installation

Install nixOS

mount /dev/vg/root /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/disk/by-partlabel/boot /mnt/boot
swapon /dev/vg/swap

Copy wpa_supplicant configuration:

cp /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf /mnt/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Final steps

nix-shell -p git
git clone https://github.com/nikitarevenco/dotfiles.git \
          /mnt/etc/nixos
nixos-generate-config --root /mnt --show-hardware-config \
            > /mnt/etc/nixos/hardware.nix
nixos-install
reboot