NixOS and Flakes Book: An unofficial book for beginners (free)

I don't think a beginner should use Home Manager, because that's an extra layer on the already not-beginner-friendly Nix ecosystem.

Nix has a great community of folks passionate enough to write free books ;)<p>I&#x27;ve spent over a year making my personal Nix config work well for others: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dustinlyons&#x2F;nixos-config">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dustinlyons&#x2F;nixos-config</a>

To the author, make sure to go through your CSS and fix colors for code boxes<p>At least half of the code is simply unreadable even to a person with good eyes. Some examples: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world&#x2F;nixos-with-flakes&#x2F;downgrade-or-upgrade-packages" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world&#x2F;nixos-with-flakes&#x2F;do...</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world&#x2F;nixpkgs&#x2F;overriding" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world&#x2F;nixpkgs&#x2F;overriding</a> etc.<p>Simple black-on-white with no syntax highlighting is better than this.

I found this interesting. I picked dup NixOS a few months back using configuration.nix and home.nix and completely avoided flakes all together because it was an experimental feature that will have breaking changes going forward.<p>I feel like this book jumps into flakes too soon. it should have more around the configuration.nix file, its purpose and uses, and then show systematically why one may need a home.nix file and then maybe show why something like configuration.nix&#x2F;home.nix might not serve some users (and then introduction flakes for those individuals.)

I&#x27;m expecting to receive my shiny new Framework 16 laptop in the new year. It will be my main workhorse&#x2F;development machine. I vacillate between learning Nix and giving that a go, or sticking with Arch+Ansible to manage it.

Why write a book on an experimental feature (Flakes)? Is the API unlikely to change?

Why release a book under a software license instead of like Creative Commons?

Users seem to love it, but... Why should I use it?<p>I have a number of personal machines, but I tend to mirror whatever I need to use at work; currently mostly Ubuntu.<p>Nix seems Great to help cleanup my ansible deployments, but it also seems problematic with the lack of LTS releases to where I couldn&#x27;t potentially roll out at work.

I like the UI of the website, is it some open source template?

This does not seem to work for me as I&#x27;m getting a blank page.