Getting Started

Using Jovian NixOS requires some NixOS knowledge, ideally. It's not a strict requirement, but will make your life easier, as this may make some NixOS peculiarities harder to deal with.

Installing NixOS

For now, this may be the "hardest" step, as it requires thinking ahead. Note that you're free to install NixOS in any way you want.

Though here are the requirements:

• Only the unstable channel is supported.

Here are some tips:

• You will most likely need some way to type commands, e.g. a keyboard.
• You can use an SD card to boot the installation media, freeing-up the only USB port.
• Using a docking station sure is helpful, but not needed.
• FDE (full-disk encryption) may or may not be an issue, considering there is no physical keyboard.

Up to this moment, nothing here is specific to Jovian NixOS or the Steam Deck.

Configuring Jovian NixOS

This is where the fun begins!

Configuring for your hardware

This only applies if you have a "made for gaming" device like the Steam Deck, or other portable gaming devices.

Other computers are just boring computers, and mostly need nothing special here. Note that since the Steam Deck experience is developed on AMD hardware, using other hardware may have issues, especially NVIDIA hardware.

Known hardware

• Valve Steam Deck

Feel free to contribute more for-gaming hardware-specific quirks!

Configuring the software

Info

This section is a stub.

When configuring the system, import ./modules from this repo in your configuration.

One way to do so is by using fetchTarball in the imports of your configuration.

{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:

{
  imports = [
    (
      # Put the most recent revision here:
      let revision = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"; in
      builtins.fetchTarball {
        url = "https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS/archive/${revision}.tar.gz";
        # Update the hash as needed:
        sha256 = "sha256:0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000";
      } + "/modules"
    )

  /* ... */
  ];

  /* ... */
}

Another way is to use Flakes, or any other method to fetch inputs.

When hacking on Jovian NixOS things, adding the path to a Git checkout of this repo to imports works well too.

See the Configuration page for more information about configuration.