Installing NixOS on a Framework Laptop 13

Installation media

Downloaded nixos-gnome-24.11.714533.a60651b217d2-x86_64-linux.iso from channels.nixos.org.
NixOS manual instructs to create the USB drive using dd (see Booting from a USB Drive)
I dropped the .iso onto a Ventoy USB drive and booted from it.

About the laptop

This was a Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen ordered on 2025-02-13 and received on 2025-02-17.

In the BIOS setup, I had:

AMD Ryzen 7 7840U w/ Radeon 780M Grapics
DRAM Frequency: 5600 MHz
Memory Size: 49152 MB

Disable Secure Boot

Power on the laptop, hit F2 to enter BIOS setup, and select Administer Secure Boot.
Highlight Enforce Secure Boot Enabled> and hit F5 to Disable.
Hit F10 for Save and Exit.

Boot from installation media

Insert Ventoy USB drive and power on the laptop

Detour: Secure Boot

If you hadn't disabled Secure Boot, you'd need to enroll the Ventoy shim UEFI key to boot from the Ventoy USB drive.

Still after that I wasn't able to boot the NixOS installer from the stick.

Here's what I did to enroll the Ventoy shim UEFI key:

When booting from the Ventoy USB drive, get a blue screen:

ERROR

Verification failed: (0x1A) Security Violation

┌────┐ │ OK │ └────┘
Hit Enter and get:

SHIM UEFI key management Press any key to perform MOK management Booting in 10 seconds
Hit Enter and to get a Perform MOK management screen with a menu.
Select Enroll key from disk and hit Enter.
You should get this screen:

Select key

The selected key will be enrolled into the MOK database This means any binaries signed with it will be run without prompting Remember to make sure it is a genuine key before enrolling it

┌─────────┐ │ VTOYEFI │ └─────────┘
Hit Enter to select VTOYEFI
Select ENROLL_THIS_KEY_IN_MOKMANAGER.cer.
Select "Continue".
Answer "Yes" to "Enroll the key(s)?".
You should be back to Perform MOK management, select Reboot to boot Ventoy again.
When Ventoy has booted, select nixos-gnome-24.11.714533.a60651b217d2-x86_64-linux.iso.
Select Boot in normal mode.
In the NixOS main screen, select NixOS 24.11.714533.a60651b217d2 Installer.
Then you'll get into the issue I wasn't able to solve:

error: shim_lock protocol not found error: you need to load the kernel first.

Press any key to continue...

Boot into the NixOS live environment

But back into the world where Secure Boot is disabled:

After Ventoy boots, select nixos-gnome-24.11.714533.a60651b217d2-x86_64-linux.iso.
Select Boot in normal mode.
In the NixOS main screen, select NixOS 24.11.714533.a60651b217d2 Installer.
Under Welcome to the NixOS installer, you'll see The system is not connected to the Internet. unless you've connected using an Ethernet cable.
Open the Wi-Fi > submenu in the top right menu, select your Wi-Fi network and enter the password.
Select your language → Next.
Select your location → Next.
Select your keyboard layout → Next.
Enter your name, username, new password and the root password → Next.
Select your desktop environment (I picked GNOME) → Next.
Select Allow unfree software → Next.

Prepare the internal hard disk

Ask the installer to erase the disk with a swap partition (without hibernation) and without encryption → Next.
Select manual partitioning → Next.
Create a new partitioning table with GPT.
Create a new 512 MiB fat32 partition called EFI in the free space, with the boot flag, mounted in /boot.
Create a new 944341 MiB btrfs partition called root in the free space, mounted in /.
Create a new 9013 MiB swap partition (file system linuxswap) in the free space, flag swap.
Launch the install.

---

Note

Below are some original steps from my X1 recipe.

Add or uncomment and modify the following lines, save with Ctrl-X Y Enter:

boot.loader.efi.efiSysMountPoint = "/boot/efi";

boot.loader.grub = {
  enable = true;
  version = 2;
  efiSupport = true;
  enableCryptodisk = true;
  device = "nodev";
};

boot.initrd.luks.devices = {
  crypted = {
    device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/6d2a134f-b4cb-4b9c-b002-f3e88d2b8ca6";
    preLVM = true;
  };
};

networking.hostName = "mylaptop"; # Define your hostname.

time.timeZone = "Europe/Helsinki";

i18n.defaultLocale = "fi_FI.UTF-8";

console = {
  font = "Lat2-Terminus16";
  keyMap = "fi";
}

services.xserver.layout = "fi";

services.printing.enable = true;

sound.enable = true;
hardware.pulseaudio.enable = true;

services.xserver.libinput.enable = true;

users.users.myname = {
  isNormalUser = true;
  extraGroups = [ "wheel" ]; # Enable 'sudo' for the user.
};

nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
  vim # Do not forget to add an editor to edit configuration.nix! The Nano editor is also installed by default.
  wget
  emacs
  firefox
  git
  telnet
  terminator
];

programs.gnupg.agent = {
  enable = true;
  enableSSHSupport = true;
};

services.openssh.enable = true;

networking.firefwall.enable = false;

Run the installer and reboot:

nixos-install
# enter the new root password when requested
reboot

Put NixOS configuration in Git

Open a terminal by hitting the Windows key and typing term Enter

Set the Git username and e-mail:

sudo -i
git config --global user.name "Your name"
git config --global user.email "[email protected]"

Create an SSH key:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C root@mylaptop
# accept the file path
# type a passphrase twice

Initialize and push the Git repository:

cd /etc/nixos
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git push -u origin master

akaihola/nixos-framework-laptop-13.rst