Jake Goldsborough

NixOS as a daily driver on a late 2011 Macbook Pro, part 3/? - user, WM, tools

Published June 5, 2025

3 min read

Tags: nixos, linux

Recap

See Part 2 where I cover installation and basic configuration.

Outline

Things we will be covering in this post:

Install a Text Editor

First things first, let's install a better text editor to make our configuration updating easier.

You will have to use nano for this. Open /etc/nixos/configuration.nix and add the following:

programs.neovim = {
  enable = true;
  defaultEditor = true;
};

Use ctrl+o then ctrl+x to write and exit nano.

Then run nixos-rebuild switch. NixOS will rebuild your config and return you to a terminal. You should now be able to start neovim by running nvim.

Adding a User

Now that we can edit files easier, let's add a non-root user.

users.users.disco = {
 isNormalUser = true;
 extraGroups = [
   "wheel"             # Allows sudo access
   "networkmanager"    # Allows controlling network
   "audio"             # Audio device access
   "video"             # Video devices (e.g. backlight, GPU)
   "input"             # For input devices like keyboard/mouse config
 ];
};

Again, save and exit and then rebuild:

nixos-rebuild switch

After successfully rebuilding, you will need to set a password for the new user. For me that's:

passwd disco

Then you can exit and login as your new sudo accessible user.

Enable Network Tools

This will enable tools like nmtui to allow for easier network setup.

networking.networkmanager.enable = true;

Install a Window Manager and Daily Driver Tools

I am using Hyprland. Hyprland is a dynamic Wayland compositor that supports tiling, floating, and hybrid layouts.

Add the following to your /etc/nixos/configuration.nix. This enables Hyprland along with XDG portals, which are required for features like file pickers, screen sharing, and communication between sandboxed apps (especially Flatpaks and browsers).

programs.hyprland.enable = true;
xdg.portal = {
  enable = true;
  wlr.enable = true;
  extraPortals = [ pkgs.xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland ];
};

Before rebuilding this time though, we will also install some daily driver tools.

One reason for this is that Hyprland uses the kitty terminal by default.

Look for this line in your /etc/nixos/configuration.nix file:

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [

You will likely find this commented out with wget listed as a package.

Expand on that section so it becomes:

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
  kitty # needed by Hyprland by default
  wget
  hyprpaper # background utility for Hyprland
  hyprlock # screen lock utility for Hyprland
  librewolf # privacy focused browser based on firefox
  wofi # needed by Hyprland by default
  git
  waybar # status bar for Hyprland
  wezterm
];

Some tools like neovim and hyprland have official NixOS modules, which let you enable them declaratively using enable = true;. Other tools (like git or librewolf) don’t have modules and should be added directly to environment.systemPackages.

Now it's time to rebuild. Again, this is done by: sudo nixos-rebuild switch.

You can now manually start Hyprland by running: exec Hyprland

You will be greeted with nothing but a random wallpaper supplied by Hyprland.

A couple important default keybinds are:

Starting Hyprland on Login

Let's make Hyprland start on login. Create a ~/.bash_profile file if it doesn't exist and add this:

if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ]; then
  exec Hyprland
fi

Summary

In this post, we have:

Next Time

In Part 4, we'll continue to configure Hyprland: adding keybindings, wallpapers, waybar, and maybe even a lockscreen.

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