Where is nixos documentation manual?

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1

Hello,

I am new to nixos and want to run nixos. I try to read the documentation on nixos.org but it is very confusing and doesn’t say how to make a configuration that works and does what i want, and most of it says it has been moved somewhere. Then I see that nix.dev is new official nixos documentation, but it only says things about nixos virtual machines and terraform, but i just have server, so i don’t know where to find nixos documentation here.

Also how do flakes work? nix.dev only says very little about them

Thank you

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Hello, i’m a new user too i understand your pain the documentation really suck… a lot of people complain about that : Why is the Nix documentation so bad? - r/NixOS

And for learning Nixos, i used the help from the IA i don’t really recommend to use the documentation because a lot things is not uptodate sometimes this will work other times this will not work it’s 50/50…

If you want to understand Nixos fast and easily you have three choices :

  1. Navigate between each config from people on github right here : Configuration Collection - NixOS Wiki
  2. Use this powerful AI : https://www.phind.com
  3. Watching videos on YT : Piped

PS : Vimjoyer explain a lot things from Nixos very well !

Sorry, i do not understand too how it work… (but i’m using it) most of my config has been copied from other people config

Good luck !

3

Hey,
I also was struggling at the beginning, but then it just started to make sense (regarding some aspects).
The main issue I had with the nixos wiki is that it just explained how to use the tool with nix, but not what the tool is, does and how to use it. So my recommendation regarding that is to just take a look into the arch linux wiki, because it oftentimes does a great job at explaining the tool, and then you can take a look at the nix wiki to see how to use it in nixos.
Since you are still learning about flakes I can recommend you these articles/books:

https://xeiaso.net/blog/nix-flakes-1-2022-02-21/

And I also just wanna throw in some other tools that help me navigate the nix landscape:

I also just want to say that while you don’t need to know the nix language to use nixos is is one of the more helpful things you can do to understand nix. Because then you can read the source code of the package you are trying to use and this enables you to not only understand how it works but also apply this knowledge to your own configuration. In my opinion nix code is very easy to read, even if you don’t really understand everything. You can (from my experience) just skip over the parts you don’t get and still kinda know what is going on. For that I really recommend reading (parts of) the nix pills (language basics).

And @retzx is right, that videos on youtube can be very helpful.

I hope that this was of any help to you :slight_smile: