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

The folder overlays contains overlays for nix itself. E.g. alter packages like patching.

The folder home is related to extras for home-manager. It has the following sub folder:

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.

shells/

Holds shells 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 system.s 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

Migration:

• Migrate home manager to use flake for better rollback support if update breaks something.

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:

  • http://www.krusader.org
  • https://ignorantguru.github.io/spacefm/
  • https://www.mucommander.com/

Resources

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

• https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRGI9KQ3_HP_OFRG6R-p4iFgMSK1t5BHs
• https://nixos.org/learn.html
• https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/index.html
• https://nixos.wiki/
• https://nixcloud.io/main/en/
• https://teu5us.github.io/nix-lib.html
• https://ryantm.github.io/nixpkgs/
• https://www.tweag.io/blog/2020-05-25-flakes/
• https://github.com/NixOS/nix-book