Why?
In my opinion, NixOS is a great operating system and is very straightforward and stable once you learn how to use it, however for someone without knowledge about Nix or who has never heard of NixOS, it can be very confusing. I stumbled upon Nix and NixOS a bit less than a year ago, and since then have worked to try to create tools that make using NixOS more user/noob friendly, namely: adding the calamares installer to NixOS, creating a graphical configuration editor: nixos-conf-editor, and creating a GNOME software-like software center: nix-software-center.
So why not just work on NixOS itself? I do plan on adding the tools/apps I create to nixpkgs once I feel they are stable enough, but for now, there is still a lot of work to be done. In addition to this SnowflakeOS will allow me to make opinionated decisions I feel wouldn’t fit right in NixOS. My plan is to keep SnowflakeOS as small as possible and upstream as many packages/options/modules as possible.
What will SnowflakeOS have?
- Graphical user interface focused. The plan is to ship tools like nixos-conf-editor and nix-software-center out of the box.
- Flakes are enabled by default. No channels, no
nix-env
. - GNOME by default
- Simple installation
Progress
- Package management: nix-software-center
- Lots of bug fixes and testing needed
- Configuration management: nixos-conf-editor
- More testing needed
- Installer: os-installer with os-installer-snowflake-config
- WIP
- Generation management/garbage collection GUI
- Not started
- Hardware driver configuration GUI
- Not started
What do you think about this idea? If you’re interested in helping please reach out! I would also greatly appreciate any feedback or ideas anyone has!
Links
- Website: https://snowflakeos.org
- GitHub: SnowflakeOS · GitHub
- Discord: SnowflakeOS
- Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/#snowflakeos:matrix.org