Introduction

Using nix on systems other than NixOS is slightly different from using it on NixOS. Without these tricks, you may not see app icons and there will be no 3D acceleration in GUI apps. The home-manager package solves these problems and helps make your system more reproducible and declarative. Having configured everything once, you can save the config and use it next time, which saves a lot of time.

Install nix package manager

First of all you need to install nix package manager.

Disable SELinux

Nix only works with SELinux disabled.

You can check if you are using SELinux by executing

sestatus

If you got SELinux status: disabled or bash: sestatus: command not found then you can proceed to Installing. Otherwise you need to edit /etc/sysconfig/selinux file and disable SELinux policy.

sudo sed -i '/SELINUX=enforcing\|SELINUX=permissive/s/.*/SELINUX=disabled/' /etc/selinux/config

Reboot your PC.

Install

Just execute install command from official website and follow the instructions of the installer.

sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon

Now you can check version of your nix package manager.

nix-env --version

Set up home-manager

Install nix-channels

First of all you need to add and install nix-channels which home-manager requires.

nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable unstable
nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-23.05.tar.gz home-manager
nix-channel --add https://github.com/guibou/nixGL/archive/main.tar.gz nixgl
nix-channel --update

You can verify installation by running

nix-channel --list

Install home-manager

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.home-manager

You can verify installation by running

home-manager --version

Configure home-manager

Create home-manager directory under ~/.config

mkdir ~/.config/home-manager

Then you need to create file home.nix inside this directory.

touch ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix

And edit

nano ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix

by adding this lines:

{config, pkgs, lib, ...}:
let
  unstable = import <unstable> { config = { allowUnfree = true; }; };

  nixgl = import <nixgl> {} ;
  nixGLWrap = pkg: pkgs.runCommand "${pkg.name}-nixgl-wrapper" {} ''
    mkdir $out
    ln -s ${pkg}/* $out
    rm $out/bin
    mkdir $out/bin
    for bin in ${pkg}/bin/*; do
     wrapped_bin=$out/bin/$(basename $bin)
     echo "exec ${lib.getExe nixgl.auto.nixGLDefault} $bin \$@" > $wrapped_bin
     chmod +x $wrapped_bin
    done
  '';
in {
  # enable quirks (e.g. set $XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable) for non NixOS operating systems 
  targets.genericLinux.enable = true;

  # enable unfree proprietary software
  nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;

  # install software
  home.packages = with pkgs; [
    nixgl.auto.nixGLDefault
    (nixGLWrap fragments)
    (nixGLWrap amberol)
    (nixGLWrap drawing)
    (nixGLWrap unstable.collision)
   ];


  home.username = "<USER>";
  home.homeDirectory = "/home/<USER>";
  home.stateVersion = "23.05";
}

replace <USER> with your username.

Now you can install nix software by adding package name in home.nix and then rebuild config. You can search packages on official website https://search.nixos.org/packages. Then put your package inside home.packages variable like this.

home.packages = with pkgs; [
    nixgl.auto.nixGLDefault # don't delete this
    (nixGLWrap <YOUR_PACKAGE>) # if you want 3d acceleration
    <YOUR_PACKAGE> # if you don't want 3d acceleration
    unstable.<YOUR_PACKAGE> # if you want to install package from unstable channel
   ];

Don't forget to rebuild configuration, otherwise the changes will not be applied!

home-manager switch

Or install software manually using nix-env (no 3d acceleration).

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.<YOUR_PACKAGE>

If there is no installed application icon on the desktop, just log out and log in again.