Configuration for my workstation

This repository can reproduce the entirety of my system; including services, applications and configurations. It should contain everything necessary for an usable OS without any further configuration.

The configuration is based on my needs, however it does not mention my details anywhere (except user.nix); so it should be usable to anyone with similar tastes.

Features

• Keyboard and command line oriented
  • i3, kakoune, qutebrowser and lots of shell utilities
• Lightweight, fast, simple
  • No bloated DE's or "fully-featured" applications.
  • JavaScript disabled by default.
  • Single codebase describing the whole system.
• (Mostly) hardware agnostic
  • Minimal hardware-related configuration.
  • Tested on Thinkpad T4xx and X1.
• Bleeding-edge
  • Closely follows nixpkgs and home-manager HEAD
• (Almost) Free as in freedom
  • Explicitly allow non-free packages in 'system.nix' (look for 'allowUnfreePredicate')

Motivation

I follow the philosophy of "things should do one thing and do it well", so I try to avoid complex tools. I found a few rule-of-thumbs which helps me decide if a tool is sufficiently complex or not. I try not to use something if it:

• .. does window-management, but is not a window manager. (editors with frames, terminals with splits, browsers with tabs etc.)
• .. has an integrated editor. (usually GUI applications and curses TUI's.)
• .. does not have a form of text-based configuration.
• .. requires a lot of configuration/customisation to use.
• .. not free (as in freedom).

It's pretty hard to find applications fitting all of those criteria; so sometimes I resort to disabling features, preferably with a configuration flag, or simply by disabling the relevant keybindings.

Installation

• Install NixOS as usual.
• (Optional) Install cachix:

$(nix-build -A cachix https://cachix.org/api/v1/install)/bin/cachix use utdemir

• Fork and clone this repository.
• Run: cp home-private.nix{.example,}; cp system-private.nix{.example,}
• Update user.nix with your personal information.
• (IMPORTANT) Update hardware.nix based on your hardware.
• Run:

./make.sh switch

• Play around.
• Tweak system.nix, home.nix and dotfiles/ according to your personal taste.

Warning: The installed system is configured to use a binary cache populated by me (https://utdemir.cachix.org). It should reduce the amount of things you build on updates; however, theoretically, I could publish malicious binaries to that server without you knowing. So, remove the parts referring to utdemir.cachix.org from nix.binaryCaches field on configuration.nix if you do not trust me.

Maintenance

There is a make.sh on the repository responsible for common maintenance tasks.

• ./make.sh build: Builds the system configuration. Does not make any modifications to your system. Useful to see if your changes evaluate without problems.
• ./make.sh switch: Builds the system configuration, adds it to the boot menu and activates it.
• ./make.sh update: Updates the nixpkgs and home-manager revisions, and builds the system. Run this every few days for an up-to-date system. It also prints out the GitHub urls of the changes.
• ./make.sh cleanup: Garbage collects unused derivations, and deletes the generations older than a week. Run this to get some disk space.

Docs

Below some tips for the tools I'm using, and my rationale for using them. They are not comprehensive, so consult their own documentation to use them effectively.

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Operating System: NixOS

All this configuration revolves around using NixOS operating system and the Nix programming language.

Nix provides a declarative way to declare your system, and has enough theory behind to have purity and rollbacks trivial.

The way I use Nix/NixOS slightly differs from the common usage:

• I use home-manager to manage my dotfiles. This gives me a fully-reproducible and programmable system.
• I don't use channels and NIX_PATH. I understand the rationale behind them, but I think they make things less obviously deterministic (action at a distance). So I prefer to always pin nixpkgs and don't use < ... > syntax at all.
• I follow the master branch of nixpkgs. The main reason is that I like to have the latest & greatest packages on my system. I found it quite stable, and I can just reboot the system to a previous generation if there is a major issue.

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Window Manager: i3

I use i3 as the window manager. It is fast and does its jobs well.

i3 is my only window manager. So; I do not use terminal-multiplexers, applications with tabs/panes/frames/buffers etc.

• Configuration: dotfiles/i3
• Keybindings:
  • Holding Super shows the status bar & system tray.
  • Super+enter: open terminal
  • Super+d: command runner
  • Super+s: open given query in DuckDuckGo (useful with bangs)
  • Super+shift+q: quit focused application
  • Super+<arrow>: focus on windows
  • Super+shift+<arrow>: move windows
  • Super+backspace: Lock screen
  • Super+f: Toggle full-screen

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Shell: zsh

I use zsh. I have some amount of customisation, but nothing unusual. There is not a huge plus of using zsh, probably bash would also just do fine.

• Configuration: dotfiles/zshrc
• Keybindings:
  • Ctrl+t: Uses fzf to get a prompt containing a list of files below $PWD.
  • Ctrl+s: Marks the current line as "sticky", so it'll be automatically appended to the following command prompts. Useful for repeatedly using the same tool (git, kubectl eg.).
  • r: Opens ranger
  • tmp: cd's to a temporary directory.

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Terminal Emulator: kitty

I use kitty, with minimal features. I find it sufficiently simple, easy to configure, and it has a hints feature I use quite frequently. However its main developer is a bit mean, so I am keen to switch to a new terminal emulator; however I couldn't figure out a easy way to get hints without using tmux.

• Configuration: dotfiles/kitty.conf
• Keybindings:
  • ctrl+shift+{c,p}: copy/paste selection
  • ctrl+shift+l: opens the scrollback buffer with less
  • ctrl+shift+p: adds hints to file-path looking things on the screen for easier selection.
  • ctrl+shift+u: same thing for urls.
  • ctrl+shift+h: same thing for hashes.
  • ctrl+shift+{+,-}: increase/decrease font size.

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Editor: kakoune

I spend a lot of time editing text, so it took me quite a long time to settle on using kakoune. I think it's the only usable editor adhering to the UNIX philosophy.

Surprisingly, I only have about 30 lines of configuration for it, they just add a few keybindings, make it always use the system clipboard, and change a few visuals.

Even if I am a software developer using multiple programming ecosystems daily; I do not have programming-specific configuration on my editor. I use kakoune solely for editing code, and have an another terminal window open which runs/typechecks the project continuously.

• Executable: kak
• Configuration: dotfiles/kakrc
• See the configuration file and Kakoune docs for the keybindings.

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Web Browser: qutebrowser

I use qutebrowser as my web browser. It is a keyboard-oriented minimal web browser using QtWebEngine (WebKit). The only customisation I make makes it use separate windows as tabs and makes it use kakoune as editor. Also, javascript is disabled by default, see the keybindings to disable it per-host basis (or just modify the configuration).

Actually, I would prefer to use Firefox with some addons & customisation to make it keyboard-oriented & disabling tabs. However currently there is no easy way to configure Firefox easily & install addons without using the GUI. There are some ongoing work adding this functionality to nixpkgs, I will consider switching when they are merged.

• Configuration: dotfiles/qutebrowser/config.py
• Keybindings:
  • ctrl+v: passthrough mode (send keystrokes directly to the website)
  • shift+esc: disable passthrough mode
  • o: open a website
  • f: add hints to the links
  • F: add hints to the links (open in new window)
  • tsh: toggle javascript for the current host for current session
  • tSh: toggle javascript for the current host permanently

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Password Manager: pass

I use password-store to manage my passwords and OTP's, and use its git integration to sync them to a private Git repository.

Checkout its documentation for the usage, I don't have any special configuration for it. However, there are a few helpers:

• super+p keybinding open a menu with your passwords, and you can choose to copy either the password or the OTP token (if available) to your clipboard.
• There is a qr2pass script on your $PATH which will take a screenshot of your screen containing a barcode for an OTP and adds it to the given password file; so you can use it to generate OTP tokens.
• There is an additional pass rotate command which shows you the oldest password you have.

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Other tools

I also use tons of other tools for various purposes.

Checkout ./home.nix to see them all.

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FAQ

1. Opening {images,pdfs,videos,documents}

   • sxiv for images
   • zathura for pdfs
   • mpv for videos
   • soffice for office documents

2. Installing an application

   Add a line to ./home.nix. Do not use nix-env.

3. External monitors

   • You can use arandr to interactively configure monitors.
   • If you have a setup you frequently use, use autorandr to save it.

4. Software development

   I don't use an IDE and I was never able to configure Vim or Emacs to work reliably and uniformly on different programming languages and build systems. So, here is the setup I use:

   • I open three terminal windows (a big one on the left, two small ones on the right.

   • I execute the editor on the left, ranger on the top-right and make the compilation output available on the bottom-right. It looks like this:

     +--------+--------+
     |        | ranger |
     |        |        |
     + editor +--------+
     |        | watch  |
     |        |        |
     +--------+--------+
     

   • I use the ranger window for browsing the other files or using rg to search for definitions, or for any auxiliary things I do using a terminal.

   • On bottom-right, I figure out a way to have the compilation output available. Here are some examples:

     • Haskell: Use ghcid.
     • Scala: Use ~ compile command on sbt.
     • Interpreted languages: Use entr to continuously run the interpreter:
       • fd '.*.py' | entr -c python main.py
       • fd | entr -c nix-build --show-trace
       • echo slides.md | entr -c pandoc -t beamer slides.md -o slides.pdf

5. Autostarting applications

   • If it is a simple command running as your user, put a line to dotfiles/i3/autostart.sh.
   • If it is a system daemon, put it to system.nix; either using an available NixOS module or as a custom systemd service.

6. Something else

   If you have a problem, probably I had faced it before. Just open an issue and I will get back to you.