system76-nixos-up.md

Tested on a System76 Lemur Pro.

1. Download installation iso onto USB
   • sudo dd if=~/Downloads/nixos-plasma5-21.11.335288.3ddd960a3b5-x86_64-linux.iso of=/dev/sdc1
     • Make sure the output is the right device!
   • I used the KDE Plasma graphical image.
2. Boot laptop into it
   • Hold ESC on startup according to this
   • Select "One Time Boot" and "Boot from USB".
   • That boots into grub. Was able to boot into the live usb with some commands from this blog
     • ls and find the drive formatted as msdos1 to identify the USB.
     • set root=(hd0,msdos1) This was the name of the drive for me.
     • ls / should show the contents of the NixOS iso. /EFI/boot/bootx64.efi is what we're looking for.
     • chainloader /EFI/boot/bootx64.efi
     • boot and you will be brought into the NixOS graphical image.
   • Apparently it shouldn't be booting into grub. Should file an issue
3. Connect to Ethernet via USB-C Ethernet adapter or wifi via nmtui in Konsole.
   • I confirmed my USB-C adapter works. I ran into this issue. Some small configuration.nix changes will fix the resulting slow startup.
4. Run nixos-up
   • I specifically used this rev: nix-shell https://github.com/samuela/nixos-up/archive/525a5cefd676d8686adf08bb4a49294f8a1df7c5.tar.gz
5. Edit /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix a bit.
   • networking.networkmanager.enable = true;
     • If you don't do this, you'll be in a tough spot when you boot into NixOS.
   • hardware.bluetooth.enable = true;
   • nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;
   • Add a few programs too (emacs, curl, google-chrome)
6. sudo nixos-install
   • Note: If you bork your NixOS to the point where you can't sudo nixos-rebuild switch (e.g. can't get network access), you can boot from USB again, edit /mnt/etc/nix/configuration.nix and sudo nixos-install again. It's built to be re-runnable.
7. Restart and you'll boot into NixOS!

Future considerations:

• System76-specific config? https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/mpqg1u/system76_and_nixos/