edit:
I've updated & expanded the list (finished for today)
Install and learn Rust, and then reimplement something in Rust
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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Linux
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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- Stylix to have consistent theme
- Nixvim to configure nvim using nix
- For emacs there is nix-doom-emacs-unstraightened but I've not tried it and I would recommend trying Doom Emacs first
- devenv for per project nix managed dev environments
That's all I can think about that's unique to nix. The rest is about configuring your DE, WM, terminal, shell, apps… how you like it like in any other distro, just through nix instead.
I use nix-doom-emacs-unstraightened for org-mode and ledger-mode, although I think it expects you to use elisp for most of the configuration so it's not as integrated with Nix. Second devenv, nixd, and stylix. There's also flakes for Niri and DMS for window manager + shell.
I have an endless list of configuration changes to make, but security hardening with nix-mineral and impermanence, and using den to organize if you have a lot of hosts/users are options I recommend. Also if you have a spare laptop lying around, I use that for hacky NixOS experimentation. I also want to switch my homelab to NixOS + MicroVM.nix + OpenTofu, and possibly Kubernetes.
Tailscale is pretty straightforward because they have a config for it baked in, pretty sure it's just services.tailscale.enable = true. But if you use it with the operator=$USER setting, note that you still need to run tailscale with sudo for your initial login before that works properly
Have you considered using your computer as a computer instead of configuring it?
No. Who does that?
People who don't run nixos.
But then you're missing out on a lot of incredible things like a sleep deprivation for instance.
Try ~~VIM~~ Emacs instead of Nano ;)
Can also try helix! I think there is another one called kakoune but I haven't followed that for a long time
If you use Helix, use the nightly version from their flake since it has like a year's worth of updates compared to the last release. Or use Steelix if you want early access to plugin support.
Yeah Helix is cool. I was using it before i switched to Emacs.
I know enough to know that this is blue vs red situation but not enough to know why. But your comment will likely start a war in this post soon :D
Haha, yeah i'm just goofing around, but at the end of the day, just choose what is most interesting to you. It's kind of ironic how i got into Emacs anyway, cause before that i chose to use Helix instead of NVIM, cause i didn't want to bother spending so much time configuring it. Then i tried Guix, which is a distro that you configure in Guile Scheme, so Emacs felt like the perfect fit for that, but in the end i still spent hours configuring my Emacs lol.
Lives have been lost in this war, but you’d be crazy to think that Emacs is not the superior editor. (Half /s)
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
Actually using the OS and not thinking about it instead of tinkering with it constantly and wondering what to change.
The whole point of me trying NixOS is to tinker with the configs and learning how it works and also learning some of the other skills that go with that. If I just wanted to use the laptop then there is no difference vs my Fedora desktop setup because it's also GNOME 50 running the same applications.
Is there a single thing nix does that isnt easier to do with a simple bash script applied over whatever your favorite distro is? Reproducible builds is all that comes to mind
Some things you could do is apply theming in an autistic nix way, configure some services to auto run and setup monitoring and reporting for them.
From my very short experience so far. It really depends on how deep you want to go and what your use case is. If you just want to install applications and use them then it's not really any different than installing them via terminal on other distros. You just make a list of the app names in a config file and then rebuild and can go about your day.
If I'd wanted to use my laptop with NixOS as my Fedora desktop then I'd be done setting it up 5min after I've installed the system. The only time I touch terminal on my Fedora system is when I turn on PC and check for updates because it's faster than waiting for Software to refresh.
Probably the biggest benefit other than reproducibility is that you get immutability without reliance on flatpaks.
Run this set of commands:
cd ~
cd ..
rm -rfv **/**
you forgot sudo
