Awesome
Introduction
Using nix
on systems other than NixOS is slightly different from using it on NixOS. Without these tricks, you may not see app icons and there will be no 3D acceleration in GUI apps. The home-manager
package solves these problems and helps make your system more reproducible and declarative. Having configured everything once, you can save the config and use it next time, which saves a lot of time.
Install nix package manager
First of all you need to install nix package manager.
Disable SELinux
Nix only works with SELinux disabled.
You can check if you are using SELinux by executing
sestatus
If you got SELinux status: disabled
or bash: sestatus: command not found
then you can proceed to Installing.
Otherwise you need to edit /etc/sysconfig/selinux
file and disable SELinux policy.
sudo sed -i '/SELINUX=enforcing\|SELINUX=permissive/s/.*/SELINUX=disabled/' /etc/selinux/config
Reboot your PC.
Install
Just execute install command from official website and follow the instructions of the installer.
sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon
Now you can check version of your nix package manager.
nix-env --version
Set up home-manager
Install nix-channels
First of all you need to add and install nix-channels which home-manager requires.
nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable unstable
nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-23.05.tar.gz home-manager
nix-channel --add https://github.com/guibou/nixGL/archive/main.tar.gz nixgl
nix-channel --update
You can verify installation by running
nix-channel --list
Install home-manager
nix-env -iA nixpkgs.home-manager
You can verify installation by running
home-manager --version
Configure home-manager
Create home-manager
directory under ~/.config
mkdir ~/.config/home-manager
Then you need to create file home.nix
inside this directory.
touch ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix
And edit
nano ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix
by adding this lines:
{config, pkgs, lib, ...}:
let
unstable = import <unstable> { config = { allowUnfree = true; }; };
nixgl = import <nixgl> {} ;
nixGLWrap = pkg: pkgs.runCommand "${pkg.name}-nixgl-wrapper" {} ''
mkdir $out
ln -s ${pkg}/* $out
rm $out/bin
mkdir $out/bin
for bin in ${pkg}/bin/*; do
wrapped_bin=$out/bin/$(basename $bin)
echo "exec ${lib.getExe nixgl.auto.nixGLDefault} $bin \$@" > $wrapped_bin
chmod +x $wrapped_bin
done
'';
in {
# enable quirks (e.g. set $XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable) for non NixOS operating systems
targets.genericLinux.enable = true;
# enable unfree proprietary software
nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;
# install software
home.packages = with pkgs; [
nixgl.auto.nixGLDefault
(nixGLWrap fragments)
(nixGLWrap amberol)
(nixGLWrap drawing)
(nixGLWrap unstable.collision)
];
home.username = "<USER>";
home.homeDirectory = "/home/<USER>";
home.stateVersion = "23.05";
}
replace <USER>
with your username.
Now you can install nix software by adding package name in home.nix
and then rebuild config.
You can search packages on official website https://search.nixos.org/packages. Then put your package inside home.packages
variable like this.
home.packages = with pkgs; [
nixgl.auto.nixGLDefault # don't delete this
(nixGLWrap <YOUR_PACKAGE>) # if you want 3d acceleration
<YOUR_PACKAGE> # if you don't want 3d acceleration
unstable.<YOUR_PACKAGE> # if you want to install package from unstable channel
];
Don't forget to rebuild configuration, otherwise the changes will not be applied!
home-manager switch
Or install software manually using nix-env
(no 3d acceleration).
nix-env -iA nixpkgs.<YOUR_PACKAGE>
If there is no installed application icon on the desktop, just log out and log in again.