An Omakase developer setup with Nix

Nix port of Omakub - "An Omakase Developer Setup for Ubuntu 24.04" by DHH.

When DHH released Omakub, I was intrigued by the idea and because I wanted to level up my Nix skills, I decided to go Omakase on the Omakase and add my own opinionated Nix sauce to the mix.

Assumptions

• You're running NixOS 24.05 stable with Gnome (as Omakub is built around Gnome). If you're not running NixOS yet, download the batteries included Omakix installation ISO
• You're using Home Manager as a NixOS module with or without flakes
• You have enabled unfree software (nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;)

Installation

Omakase style

1. Download the latest Omakix installer ISO

2. Flash it to a suitable USB drive

3. Boot it, install it, enjoy it

4. Alternatively and arguably the more sensible thing to do with ISO's from random strangers on the Internet: boot it in a virtual machine

Notes

• The installer ISO assumes you're booting with UEFI and will partition the destination disk with GPT and enable full disk encryption (LUKS).
• After booting into the installed system for the first time and entering the chosen full disk encryption password, you'll be greeted with the login screen. You log in with the user account name you set during installation and the default password is changeme, which tells you exactly what you should do with it.

With flakes

1. Add Omakix as an input to your system configuration flake

inputs = {
  nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-24.05";
  home-manager = {
    url = "github:nix-community/home-manager/release-24.05";
    inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
  };
  omakix = {
    url = "github:nixup-io/omakix";
    inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
    inputs.home-manager.follows = "home-manager";
  };
};

2. Add the necessary incantations to your nixosConfiguration

  outputs = {
    self,
    nixpkgs,
    home-manager,
    omakix,
  }: {
    nixosConfigurations = {
      your-nixos-hostname = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
        system = "x86_64-linux";
        modules = [
          ./configuration.nix
          home-manager.nixosModules.home-manager
          {
            # Ensure Home Manager uses unfree enabled nixpkgs
            home-manager.useGlobalPkgs = true;
            home-manager.sharedModules = [omakix.homeManagerModules.omakix];
            home-manager.users.YOUR_USERNAME = {pkgs, ...}: {
              omakix = {
                enable = true;
                theme = "catppuccin"; # Try "catppuccin", "everforest", "gruvbox", "kanagawa", "nord" or "rose-pine" instead
                browser = "google-chrome"; # Try "firefox" or "chromium" instead
              };
              home.stateVersion = "24.05";
            };
          }
        ];
      };
    };
  };

3. Rebuild your system and reboot

Rebooting rather than switching into the new configuration for the first time will make sure everything is loaded properly.

sudo nixos-rebuild --flake . boot
sudo reboot

4. Switch themes

Change omakix.theme to another supported theme, e.g. "catppuccin".

Switch to the new system configuration:

sudo nixos-rebuild --flake . switch

You may have to log out and back in again if you notice that the configuration was not applied everywhere.

5. Go do something productive

Without flakes

1. Install Home Manager as a NixOS module

Add the Home Manager stable channel and update channels

sudo nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-24.05.tar.gz home-manager

Add the Omakix channel

sudo nix-channel --add https://github.com/nixup-io/omakix/archive/master.tar.gz omakix

Update channels

sudo nix-channel --update

Add Home Manager and Omakix to your system's configuration.nix

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

{
  imports = [
    ... # Other imports, probably hardware-configuration.nix
    <home-manager/nixos>
  ];

  ... # The rest of your system configuration

  # builtins.fetchGit for NixVim below needs git
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ git ];

  # Omakix depends on unfree packages
  nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;

  # Ensure Home Manager uses unfree enabled nixpkgs
  home-manager.useGlobalPkgs = true;

  # Your Home Manager configuration
  home-manager.users.YOUR_USERNAME = { pkgs, ... }:
    let
      # Omakix depends on NixVim
      nixvim = import (builtins.fetchGit {
        url = "https://github.com/nix-community/nixvim?ref=nixos-24.05";
      });
    in {
      imports = [
        nixvim.homeManagerModules.nixvim
        <omakix/modules>
      ];

      omakix = {
        enable = true;
        theme = "tokyo-night"; # Try "catppuccin", "everforest", "gruvbox", "kanagawa", "nord" or "rose-pine" instead
        browser = "google-chrome"; # Try "firefox" or "chromium" instead
      };

      home.stateVersion = "24.05";
    };
}

2. Rebuild your system and reboot

Rebooting rather than switching into the new configuration for the first time will make sure everything is loaded properly.

sudo nixos-rebuild boot
sudo reboot

3. Switch themes

Change omakix.theme to another supported theme, e.g. "catppuccin".

Switch to the new system configuration:

sudo nixos-rebuild switch

You may have to log out and back in again if you notice that the configuration was not applied everywhere.

4. Go do something productive

Things you can do with this flake

This assumes you're running NixOS or another Linux distribution and have the Nix package manager installed.

Run a demo VM with Omakix enabled

nix run github:nixup-io/omakix

Generate your very own ISO installation image

nix build github:nixup-io/omakix
# The ISO image will be in result/iso/

# Or after customizing the nix configuration in machines/installer
nix build

Run the, arguably limited, test suite

nix flake check github:nixup-io/omakix

Known limitations

• Depends on Unfree Software (nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;) for obvious reasons
• Gnome does not yet support accent colors (see Draft merge request: Support accent color). Ubuntu has its own implementation for Gnome accent colors. This project uses the Custom Accent Colors Gnome extension but the supported colors are not an exact match to Ubuntu's Gnome accent colors as used in Omakub.
• This project uses NixVim instead of LazyVim
• Nixpkgs does not seem to have the sainnhe.everforest and qufiwefefwoyn.kanagawa VS Code extensions. These themes may work if the extension is installed through the marketplace?
• NixVim does not seem to support colorschemes.everforest. Omakix uses colorschemes.base16.colorscheme = "everforest" instead. This may not be accurate.

Contribution

"Wow this is absolutely awesome, I cannot hold my enthusiasm to contribute to this."

Well fear not fellow traveler of Cyberspace because you can:

• It's possible this doesn't even work on the first try. If that's the case, open an issue. Better yet, fix the problem and open a PR.

• If you are a Nix expert and cringe at my absolutely awful, totally not copied from elsewhere Nix code, please open PRs with suggestions on how to improve things. I'm not necessarily looking for more abstractions, but welcome improvements to the way it's currently done. Most of this was "inspired" by KDE Plasma Manager and NixOS Auto Installer. See Nix related issues.

• I need people to do exhaustive feature comparison between Omakub and this project. If you spot something that isn't exactly like it is set up in Omakub, open an issue for it. Keep in mind that the fact that Omakub is based on Ubuntu, there may be some differences that are harder to overcome. Although that would of course never be attributed to a problem with NixOS. Check out known things that need porting over.

• We need an equivalent thing to "I use Arch, by the way" for Nix(OS) to use at cocktail parties. Suggestions welcome!

Acknowledgements

• Thanks to DHH for spelunking through no doubt countless rabbit holes to come up with Omakub - "An Omakase Developer Setup for Ubuntu 24.04". And thanks for Ruby On Rails, David. For 18 years Rails has given my programming career such a pleasant and efficient workflow that I can afford to waste countless hours on stuff like this.

• Thanks to Typecraft for his videos which have been instrumental to DHH for making Omakub. I enjoyed the video coverage on Omakub and I like your style, man. I am a fellow Ruby on Rails veteran who's looking at 18 years and counting now). Though admittedly I don't use Arch (btw).

• Thanks to snow at VoidWarranties for diving into Nix and testing Omakix out!

• Thanks to KDE Plasma Manager for inspiration on how to add modules to Home Manager and thanks to NixOS Auto Installer for ideas on how to build a quasi unattended NixOS installer.

• Nix is awesome.

Contact

• You can reach me via good old e-mail for a serious and more meaningful conversation if you're into that kind of thing

• You can also find me on X or in the Fediverse over at Mastodon

• Check out my website over at https://michaelsmith.be for more outdated information prior to hiring me