Looking for a basic beginners guide to NixOS for a desktop user. I am not a programmer, just a Linux home user and distro-hopper.
Just some basics, like installing and removing packages, updating system, handling that magic config file, and reverting the system if necessary. And anything else essential that I neglected to mention…
or/and
get yourself to a user group
or start one with a PR!
and
come hang out in the mountains.
I also forgot the to mention the nix manual… doh!
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For NixOS in particular (excluding standalone Nix the package manager), this is pretty much how you do everything.
install packages:
{
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.coreutils pkgs.zlib ];
}
updating system:
nix flake lock --update-input nixpkgs (assumes you use a flake to manage your config)
Even if you are not a programming, you are gonna wanna track your configuration in git most likely, if you know how to use it even a little. That will allow you to roll back to most any point in your commit history.
As far as rolling back a mistake, NixOS will automatically keep your previous system closures as startup items in your boot loader. So you can revert directly from a boot menu if you boot into a broken system.
In a pinch (if you have done something dumb like clear all your generations before a breaking update 
) you can use your git repository to restore your system from a commit that was previously known to work.
There is also simply the NixOS manual itself:
https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/
+1 on the NixOS manual. The very first sections that follow “Installation” are “Configuration Syntax” and “Package Management” - exactly what you asked for. Although then it follows with a bunch of docs dedicated to configuring particular software packages, later sections are more universally useful again, e.g. Rolling Back Configuration Changes.
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