NixOS — volume overview

Updated

July 30, 2025

NixOS — volume overview

An intensive 30-day sprint through Nix & NixOS, condensed from the 90-day curriculum.

Baseline

  • Nix 2.34.x · NixOS 26.05 Yarara
  • Disposable VM or spare machine
  • Flakes-capable Nix installation

Four stages

Stage Days Focus Gate
I — Nix Foundations 1–8 Nix language, store, flakes, NixOS install, host config Gate I (Day 8)
II — Daily Driver 9–15 Home Manager, direnv, secrets, services, containers Gate II (Day 15)
III — Packaging & Fleet 16–22 stdenv, packaging, deployment, CI, testing Gate III (Day 22)
IV — Mastery & Capstone 23–30 Internals, ecosystem, capstone infrastructure Gate IV (Day 30)

Exit criteria

  • Flake-driven NixOS host with rollback testing
  • Workstation with Home Manager + sops-nix secrets
  • Custom packages deployed to fleet via Colmena/deploy-rs
  • Production-grade NixOS infrastructure with CI and disaster recovery