blog/nixos-for-apt-yum-users-a-gift-that-keeps-on-giving

[giscus[bot]]

blog/nixos-for-apt-yum-users-a-gift-that-keeps-on-giving

In this article you'll learn the basics of NixOS and the Nix Expression Language. This article also reflects on my observations of NixOS's philosophy and ecosystem. By the end of the article, you should have a fully working NixOS install running on a physical host or in a Virtual Machine (with copy-paste between virtual and main systems enabled).

https://drakerossman.com/blog/nixos-for-apt-yum-users-a-gift-that-keeps-on-giving

[west303]

Very good!

[btaylor84]

I followed this tutorial, and had some major troubles with sshd not being available as a service. It turns out the capitalization of the options here are incorrect, and I think the "enable" option should be "services.openssh.enable = true;" not under the "settings" structure.

[btaylor84]

I see in your GitHub repo you fixed the "enable" factorization. I made the mistake of copying the code presented here.

[matraven]

I have found the GitHub version, but it still had issues with capitalisation. Here is the relevant section which finally worked for me:

ssh

services.openssh = {
enable = true;
settings = {
KexAlgorithms = [ "curve25519-sha256" ];
Ciphers = [ "[email protected]" ];
PasswordAuthentication = false;
PermitRootLogin = "no"; # do not allow to login as root user
KbdInteractiveAuthentication = false;
};
};

[brianbauer42]

Very helpful article for me as an amateur Debian user. Your opening remarks about existing documentation being too advanced and articles being prone to veering toward ‘rabbit holes’ are relatable. I think you may have done something similar with the long section about creating and partitioning a virtual machine. Perhaps I am making assumptions about your target audience, but I suspect most apt/yum users are able to get a working install of NixOS from the install media. That was my entry point and prompt for seeking a better understanding of the nix configuration files.

That said, your explanations of the nix configuration file is exactly what I needed. Looking forward to reading the rest of your nix blogs