Nixfiles – My Dotfiles

Overview

This project contains my personal NixOS and Home Manager configurations, managed with Nix Flakes. The goal is a highly modular and automated environment that allows me to manage my systems "yorke" (AMD) and "jello" (Intel) consistently and reproducibly. The configuration is structured to be easily adaptable and extensible while providing a robust and stable foundation for my daily work and leisure.

Technical Details

Project Structure

The configuration is divided into several logical directories to maximize modularity and maintainability:

• flake.nix: The main entry point that includes all necessary inputs such as nixpkgs, home-manager, and other dependencies. It defines the system builds and available configurations.
• lib/helper.nix: The core of automation. This library contains functions for dynamically creating systems (mkSystem), automatically detecting modules (generates my.nixos.<module>.enable options), and managing Home Manager configurations in different layers.
• hosts/: Contains all machine-specific configurations. A base.nix defines the basic settings for all hosts, while separate directories for yorke (AMD system) and jello (Intel system) contain hardware-specific adjustments.
• home-manager/: Manages Home Manager configurations. default/ contains general settings applicable to all users, while philipp/ contains my personal, user-specific setups.
• modules/nixos/: A collection of reusable NixOS modules that encapsulate specific functionalities, e.g., for the bootloader, audio (Pipewire), desktop environment (GNOME), or gaming setup.
• overlays/: Nixpkgs overlays are used to customize or patch existing packages. An example is the overlay for the German localization of the pip-on-top GNOME extension.
• packages/: Contains definitions for custom packages not included in the official nixpkgs, such as ficsit (Satisfactory Mod Manager), karere (a simple RSS reader), and lychee-slicer.

Configuration Highlights

• Desktop Environment: A heavily customized GNOME environment focused on productivity and aesthetics. Extensions include blur-my-shell for visual effects, gsconnect for mobile device integration, dash-to-dock for improved navigation, and paperwm for a tiling window management experience.
• Development: A development environment tailored to my needs. NixVim (a Neovim distribution configured with Nix) and VS Codium are preconfigured as primary editors. The Fish shell combined with direnv enables seamless management of project-specific environment variables and dependencies.
• Gaming: An optimized setup for gaming on Linux. Steam and Lutris are installed for access to a wide range of games. Sunshine is used as a game streaming host to stream games to other devices on the home network.
• Automation: The lib/helper.nix library automates the detection and inclusion of modules, significantly simplifying maintenance. New modules in the modules directory are automatically made available as options without requiring manual changes to the main configuration.

Installation and Usage

The configuration can be easily applied to a new NixOS system by cloning the repository and running the following command:

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#<hostname>

Here, <hostname> must be replaced with the name of the target system (e.g., yorke or jello). The Home Manager configuration is automatically deployed along with it.

Why This Project?

Managing my system configurations with Nix and Flakes offers me several key advantages:

• Reproducibility: I can restore my systems to an exact, defined state at any time. This eliminates configuration drift and simplifies recovery after a system failure.
• Modularity: By dividing the configuration into modules, I can easily share, reuse, and adapt configurations between my systems without duplicating code.
• Automation: The helper.nix library significantly reduces the manual effort involved in managing modules and systems, making the configuration more scalable.
• Learning Platform: This project is my personal learning platform to dive deeper into the world of Nix, functional programming, and declarative system configuration.

🔗 GitHub Repo: fleischerdesign/nixfiles