edit:
I've updated & expanded the list (finished for today)
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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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