nixpkgs / nix home-manager

I currently use Ubuntu and installed nix alongside. This repository contains my personal ~/.config/nixpkgs folder, for sharing, inspiration and retrieving feedback.

This includes home.nix to maintain home-manager, see: https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/index.html

Disclaimer

This is my personal setup for my local laptop running Ubuntu. I share this for free so everyone can have a look and inspiration or provide feedback to me.

This is not intended to be used by anyone else just by copy and pasting or cloning.

Installation

Install (clone) into ~/.config/nixpkgs.

Create ~/.config/home-manager and create a symlink from ~/.config/nixpkgs/home.nix to ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix.

Install home-manager see: https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/index.html Execute home-manager switch

Folder structure

assets/: contains assets used within nix. E.g. images used for search engines configured for Firefox.
gpg/: contains everything related to gpg, like public keys.
home/: is related to extras for home-manager.
home/files: Holds configuration files. home-manager doesn't provide modules for all programs.
home/modules: Holds nix modules. Not all programs provide modules out of the box. I add my own here, which I might create PRs for in future.
home/packages: Holds custom nix packages. Not all programs are available. Foreign programs are added here. Custom programs / scripts are added within subfolder custom.
home/programs: Holds home-manager programs. entries. Each file corresponds to a single program.
home/services: Holds home-manager services. entries. Each file corresponds to a single service.
home/*.nix: Holds files for most home.* modules. I don't like to clutter a single file with to many entries. Instead home.nix loads files from within here. Each file name should correspond to the home sub option / module.
overlays/: Holds overlays for existing packages. E.g. in order to patch them.
projects/: Holds shells and compose.yaml files for customer projects. The customers are not aware of Nix and I don't want to stress them. I use this folder to have them in version control and symlink them into the project.
systems/: Holds nix os configuration for different systems. Each system has its own subfolder.

Update

Update can be done via custom-update-system package which is a custom package.

Manual changes

List of manual needed changes for various reasons.

Use xdm as display manager, or: Allow gdm3 to use xsessions as login. Add the following content as `/usr/share/xsessions/xsession.desktop`:
```
[Desktop Entry]
Name=XSession
Comment=This session uses the custom xsession file
Exec=/etc/X11/Xsession
Type=Application
X-DesktopNames=GNOME-Flashback;GNOME;
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-flashback
```
This is used by gdm3 (installed via ubuntu host) to allow logging in via xsession which will pick up all the settings generated by home-manager.

Do not forget to call sudo desktop-file-install xsession.desktop to make system aware of the file.

Todos

Additions:

Check https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/blob/bb4b25b302dbf0f527f190461b080b5262871756/modules/files.nix#L64 to symlink files instead of re compiling setup everytime? Also see: https://www.foodogsquared.one/posts/2023-03-24-managing-mutable-files-in-nixos/
https://github.com/altdesktop/playerctl#selecting-the-most-recent-player in order to not worry about current media player, control whatever was last
https://github.com/darrenburns/dunk diff alternative
Integrate https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic for diffing source code https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/pull/2850
Alternative file managers:

Resources

Some resources I found useful (in no particular order):

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