# New to Hyprland + NixOS: Looking for Setup Advice

Help
1

Hey y’all!

I’m new to the community, and installed NixOS on my laptop just to try out Hyprland alongside NixOS. I’ve been learning Emacs since January of this year, and have no prior coding experience .

My Journey So Far

My technical goals can be defined as: “Starting January 1st of 2025, set up a version-controlled universal computing environment over the next year in order to build the best collegiate note-taking personal information system possible using only FOSS tools and an LLM.”

Now it’s October, and I’ve gone from Linux Mint → NixOS , have gotten a lot better at using Emacs’ org-mode (Spacemacs evil-mode), and seriously this is a slow hobby-style thing I do after a retail work shift.

Why NixOS + Hyprland?

All that exposition to say: I super did not desire to let my complete ignorance of programming stuff be known, and figured that switching to NixOS would help me:

  • Learn the value of declarative system config stuff and the Nix language
  • Practice alongside the Elisp I’m already using for my .spacemacs config
  • Manage both OSes from the same editor
  • Try Hyprland as the “sweetener” (with GNOME as a fallback in case it went wrong)

The Problem

But as I replied in a Hyprland forum thread: for some reason there’s a payment processing issue going on (maybe tariffs or something? I do live in the USA—I have no idea if that’s why I can’t subscribe, does anyone know if that’s likely to be the case?) that prevents me from subscribing to Hyperperks and gaining access to those project-supported config files that I could plug into Claude, thus enabling me to have an LLM hand-hold me through the process of getting a fully functional Hyprland on NixOS setup going in a forgiving fashion where I don’t feel self-conscious asking glaringly ignorant questions.

Where I’m At Now

Since those payments won’t go through, and since I’m not going to switch away from Nix (it’s super cool and such a mental pleasure to learn coming from Debian-based distros), I need to swallow my pride and ask: What would you advise doing if you were in my position?

Thanks, and nice to meet you! On the Hyprland forums my screen-name is paper-air-balloon .

I appreciate the advice. :slight_smile:

2

Hyprperks had passed me by, so I can say you don’t NEED it!

You could just try NixOS and hyprland. From memory, the default config files have sensible defaults and are well laid out. Tweak a few bits as you go along and keep a copy of your working one just in case.

There are also dotfiles available if you like a particular look, or you could try the Omarchy approach as someone has created Omarchy-nix.

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