I hit install issues with NixOS 25.05 and 26.05 on a cheap N100 mini PC. The installer for both minimal and graphical installs froze. The keyboard and USB drive stopped working.
Hardware: Texhoo QN10 / generic CWWK/Topton-class board, AMI BIOS, board name adnasc01.
5 USB ports: 4× USB-A on a Renesas µPD7202xx controller [PCI ID: xxxx:xxxx], and 1× USB-C on the Intel PCH xHCI.
Ignore the ACPI errors. I wasted a lot of time on acpi_osi= overrides that did nothing.
The USB-A ports hang off the Renesas controller. The related drivers were not being loaded in newer versions of Linux.
Nixos v24 used Linux v6.6 and worked. Nixos v25 used Linux v6.12 by default and did not work.
Two Workarounds:
- Use the USB C port instead. It’s on the Intel PCH xHCI, not Renesas controller. Install Nixos normally with any iso.
- Build a custom iso and ensure the Renesas firmware is loaded.
nix
boot.initrd.kernelModules = [ "xhci_pci_renesas" ];
hardware.enableRedistributableFirmware = true;