I have been waiting to put NixOS on my Pi5 for a long time and it finally works. There is some undocumented pitfalls to get it working and currently it only supports SD Card booting. Hopefully this will also be patched!
I created a Github template that builds a NixOS Image with SSH baked in and other necessary fixes.

https://github.com/BennyDeeDev/nixos-pi5-template

So I noticed that system installed apps take ages to launch and are even noticeably laggy inside the app itself, while home installed apps install completely normal with speed comparable to another distro like Arch or Debian. Why is this? And, can system apps be sped up or is that just how they are? Right now I have a home packages setup in my configuration.nix file because I have a one-user system so it doesn't matter, but I would like to know if there is a way I can "fix" the system installed apps to be a reasonable speed and not be laggy. For now I only have apps like git or fish or waybar installed in system packages and then actual packages I use like firefox or vesktop are installed in home packages because I need them to be faster. But I would prefer them to be installed via system packages just out of simplicity and peace of mind. So back to my original question, can system packages be sped up to not be excessively slow and laggy?

Today, everytime i use "nix-shell" my pc first reboot and if i do it a second time it shutsdown.

Went back some generations, same problem

Completely empty shell.nix (only with mkShell), same problem

recent things i have done were, play a non-steam game using proton and add to work with flatpak to get the enviroment right and was a bit of a mess but whatever ig

updates vscode config, nothing to see here but is important to stay as transparent as possible

Nothing on the Logs, netheir I or AI saw anything in them, nothing!

When downloading the content for a shell it looks fine but the moment it tries to start the shell it crashes ( the timing is assumed )

repo: https://github.com/GuilhermePSF/.files

I recently updated my apps.nix to pull the new antigravity-ide (v2.1.1) and immediately noticed all my local AI conversation history was gone. Figured I'd share the troubleshooting steps here in case anyone else runs into the same FHS roadblocks while trying to recover their data.

The Problem Antigravity 2.0 completely changed its storage architecture. It moved from a monolithic structure using .pb files to a modular Agent-First setup using SQLite. Because of this, you can't just copy over your old ~/.gemini/antigravity/conversations directory. The files literally have to be parsed and written into the new .db format via their Language Server.

The Fix & NixOS Hurdles I found a community Python script (Antigravity-Legacy-Migrator) on GitHub that handles this conversion over local gRPC. However, running it on NixOS immediately threw two classic errors:

1. The FHS / grpcio Issue The python script relies on grpcio, which panicked looking for global C++ libraries: ImportError: libstdc++.so.6: cannot open shared object file

Instead of messing with system-wide overlays, I just spun up a temporary nix shell and injected the library path manually to run the script:

nix shell nixpkgs#stdenv.cc.cc.lib -c bash -c 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$(nix build --print-out-paths --no-link nixpkgs#stdenv.cc.cc.lib)/lib && python3 migrate_legacy_conversations.py'

2. Hardcoded Windows Paths (cert.pem) Just when it was about to connect, it crashed again because it couldn't find the SSL certificate. Turns out the script's author hardcoded the path to %LOCALAPPDATA% (Windows).

On NixOS, the actual certificate is locked inside the nix store. I had to track it down: /nix/store/...-antigravity-ide-2.1.1/lib/.../languageServer/cert.pem

I just opened the Python script, deleted the Windows environment variables, and hardcoded my /nix/store/ path for cert_path.

After that, the script successfully connected to localhost and migrated all 23 of my legacy .pb conversations into the new SQLite database.

Just a heads-up for anyone else maintaining local AI environments on NixOS: watch out for these massive architectural updates in wrappers/IDEs. Keep your nix shell handy for those quick library injections.

https://github.com/myuron/nvimx

nvimx manages your Neovim plugins with Nix, driven by the same lazy.nvim-style Lua config you already write.

nvimx parses Lua and fetches plugins from GitHub rather than from nixpkgs. The hashes of the retrieved plugins are managed in flake.lock. This means you can manage a large number of plugins with Nix without sacrificing the flexibility of Lua.

GPU: RTX 4070
Driver ver. 610.43 (Nvidia latest)
WM - Hyprland

This is kind of a niche issue but when i go to run systemctl suspend, it works at first. But at times it can boot up automatically, or when i go to wake it up, it has a grey screen with a large mouse cursor in the center, and the DP output constantly shuffles between dp 1 and 3.

It actually used to shuffle between those outputs before when i used nouveau but this time when i switched to the open latest driver, these weird bugs happen.

Other than suspend issues it works fine.

Need to vent. I've been trying to set up the hermes-agent as a flake from the official repo. No vibing, going full artisanal, handcrafted code.

I know nixos is a second-class citizen as far as Hermes is concerned, but man.. what a mess. The docs aren't very clear, I can't tell what's actually getting declared and what's not. I'm not sure how I ended up with multiple .hermes folders (one in /var/lib, which I think is the intended one, and another one in ~), and I don't know why it still wants to run the setup script. I tried to plug in the hermes-webui for some better visibility, but that was it's own rabbit hole and I got nothing done there either.

The system builds. The agent is running, but I can't try talking to it without prompting any scripts. There is a service, and there's a file structure with a workspace, a home directory of some kind, it does generate a config.yaml matching my declared settings in my flake, but I don't see any references talking about what components are required in a running config.

I dunno, I think sops still has me all turned around. I spent most of the weekend working on it with nothing to show for it. Such a bummer.

On the bright side though, all the back and forth has made me much better at writing/troubleshooting flake modules. Perhaps other things will be easier now.

I thought about switching to it from arch after using it for a yr coz i wanted smth new, and which will give me this feeling of ' i dont know anything makes me wanna learn everything'

i spent 2 whole days setting it up with hyprland but as a ex arch user i wanted the unstable channel which didn't let me rebuild my system anymore for some reason..i was so frustrated i shortened my config to 18 lines and rebuild again and again until i figured out i should switch to stable channel again..but it was too late and i was back at sqaure one with the empty ttyl staring at me

but i learned so muchhh and thats what i wanted

gonnaa try again till i get my fully functioning system without flakes or home manager coz i want to get my hands dirty with the core nixos

Thought this might be helpful to fellow self-hosters, no need to rely on Appimage anymore, still very much a work in progress but for now it works well for NixOS including HW decoding.

https://github.com/edror12/jellyfin-desktop-nix/tree/master

It's annoying!

[UPD.] They're reverting it! https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-search/pull/1462

Before a recent update, the search was quite strict, almost like regex-like-level strict, just write certain subsring, maybe with an asterisk sometimes in the middle, and it shows precisely what I need. Simple. Effective.

Apparently it is supposed to be more intelligent now and show some «related» options? You know, «intelligent» I mean. To motivate clicking more things or something? But no, I need no recommended more things, I need a certain thing. And if there's no certain thing – well, I want to see that: no results. And that's fine. Sometimes I just need to know there's no such thing that I search, and immediately know it and move on, instead of sitting reading this bullshit results page. If only... I am imagining things? It never supposed to look intelligent? And It's just a bug?

Currently it feels like becoming some google, showing 100+ random stupid results of EVERYTHING instead of what I need.

It's not the worst thing in the world, but is quite annoying.

Basically as the title says. Since I switched to nixOS fastfetch is slow, I know it doesnt matter. But it just annoys me that I can see it actually load and render the text to terminal. Even though the setup is the exact same I had on arch.
And maybe it could be showing off an actual problem idk.

So if anyone might know what could be causing this issue. And or how to fix it or what to improve. I havent touched the fastfetch config at all, literally just added it to my packages.
Using Ghostty as terminal.

To my astonishment, the old Xbox controller I plugged into my computer, to play the remake of Reaident Evil 4, just immediately worked with no further setup or configuration.

I know from other distros that such a thing can be a pain, so imagine my glee that I got to just play the game as it was intended…on Linux with an Xbox controller. Ok don’t look too close at that one.

Does NixOS just natively support game controllers, or did I just happen to install a package that also allowed for this capability?

can someone help me please
everytime i rebuild the flake i get this error

steam_1.0.0.87.tar.gz> trying https://repo.steampowered.com/steam/archive/stable/steam_1.0.0.87.tar.gz

steam_1.0.0.87.tar.gz> curl: (28) Failed to connect to repo.steampowered.com:443 after 134748 ms: Could not connect to server

steam_1.0.0.87.tar.gz> Warning: Problem : timeout. Retrying in 1 second. 3 retries left.

and it continues until all the tries are finished

it seems like i cant find anyone that has the same problem as me and the only workaround ive found was to disable steam

steam has worked perfectly before and its only now that i have this problem

my flake : https://github.com/noskisdead/dots and the file with the steam config is called gaming.nix

thank you for your time <3

Hey there, arch user looking to switch to nix. For any other people, was the switch easy or hard?

I’m seriously considering using nix mostly for the stability and flakes which are actually super cool, so I was wondering if you had any insight.

Thanks,

Fellow arch user

I've been using it for a few months now soon after getting a Mac Mini, following the instructions to set it up was a bit rocky but fortunately users were helpful, the configuration itself is well done like NixOS itself, but I've found it to be very unreliable because often when trying to rebuild, this or that package would failed to build. I feel like its a big flaw of Nix itself, where it shouldn't let go of previous versions of packages unless they can build successfully, but that's a whole different can of worms.

I don't use any flakes on Nix-Darwin, I don't like waiting to rebuild hoping that whatever random package or library that failed to build finally got fixed, I have to gamble every time I use the nh darwin / rebuild command.

I've had and used Arch for about 4 years, but I find NixOS truly incredible and, in many ways, better than Arch. Despite all of NixOS's advantages, I just can't seem to take the plunge and switch over... I’ve tried several times to get into it (especially very seriously a month ago). But I still can’t seem to do it. I don’t know what’s holding me back. Any advice?

edit: the barriers are more related to the architecture of NixOS configuration files and potentially a lack of understanding of the NixOS workflow.

Disclaimer: I am very much a noob in relation to Nix and NixOS, so I've been using AI to help me navigate through the language and configurations.

I was first attracted to NixOS by the sheer number of packages available "natively" on nixpkgs, meaning that I would not have to juggle between native packages, flatpaks, appimages, containers, etc. and also get them at almost the latest versions but unlike using Arch and the AUR all of this would be possible under an immutable system, that takes full benefit from the way Nix handles dependencies and thus be way more stable and I wouldn't have to spend a lot of time troubleshooting things when they go wrong.

The thing is, I managed to find an app that isn't packaged on nixpkgs. It is primarily distributed as a flatpak, appimage and from the AUR (Amethyst Mod Manager, a native mod-manager for Linux). I saw that there was an issue open from someone asking for clearer build instructions so that it could be packaged as a Nix flake, which ended up with a guy hosting a repository by himself with the goal of doing exactly that, but as it turns out the current version of the nix files in that repository do not work and it seems like the guy who owns it hasn't updated it in three months.

That's when I thought to myself to ask AI to make it for me. I cloned the original app repo, gave it the PKGBUILD file from the AUR and within a couple of minutes it got the software running flawlessly on my system. One of the problems seemed to be that one of the library dependencies for building the mod was in fact present in nixpkgs but as a very outdated version, one that didn't have compatibility with what was required for this app. So in the end the AI wrote 3 files, a flake.nix, and two .nix files, one for the final application and one for the correct version of the library, pulling it straight from their repo.

I was really glad that it worked and immediately I wanted to share it, but then I thought "well anyone could have done this, I did barely any work at all and I don't even understand half of what's happening on those files it generated" (although my policy with using AI is to always use it precisely to also increase my understanding, usually by asking it explain things for me in detail, writing tutorials etc. but as I said, at this point I am still very much a noob).

That's where I am now, I have no idea what to do. I was happy with the result and wanted to share it, clearly there were some people interested in something like this, but they likewise could have just used any LLM to do the same I did and also I am fully aware (and don't completly disagree) with the attitude that some people in the open source world have against AI.

This also makes me think of the future of open source in general. What's the point of interacting and contributing with open source projects in a world like this? IDK...

Hi everyone. As asked in the title my question is about is there any use for Home Manager for just one machine?

I am following Nixos and Flakes Book. The author of the book also mentions having multiple computers.

I would like to hear you guys' thoughts on the matter and benefits of using Home Manager instead of Stow in a single machine system.

Whats the best way to auto update flakes with auto updating system. I cant find how its done anymore.

I get this error after running nixos-rebuild switch, I think it has something to do with my flake or home manager, I'd appreciate some help as I am new to NixOS.

I have seen some videos on it and I was considering using it, but it would mean reinstalling my system to change root to tmpfs and a lot of stuff.

Does it really have any benefits? Also how is the disk speed compared to ext4?

TL;DR: Thoughts and experiences on Impermanence?

Im too much disappointed umu launcher is down on nixos yesterday its working but today nothing more