39 lessons · 6 stages · every snippet verified on Nix 2.35
Master Nix,
one lesson at a time.
A structured path from your first dev shell to a declarative desktop and a deployed VPS. Built for a working TypeScript engineer on Arch, not for a research group.
progress
The path
- 01 Foundations The store, the CLI, and a dev shell you use every day. 6 lessons
- 02 The language A small lazy functional language. Learn all of it. 7 lessons
- 03 Flakes Inputs, lock files, and the output schema every command reads. 7 lessons
- 04 Derivations and packaging What a build actually is, and how to bend nixpkgs. 7 lessons
- 05 Home Manager and modules The module system, then your dotfiles declared in it. 5 lessons
- 06 NixOS and deployment A whole machine from one repo, on a VM, a laptop, a VPS. 7 lessons
Reference
- CLI cheatsheet Every nix subcommand you will use, grouped by task, with the old-CLI equivalent.
- Language cheatsheet Every Nix syntax form on one page, with the operator table and the builtins and lib functions used daily.
- Flake anatomy A complete annotated flake.nix, the output schema table, and every field in flake.lock.
- Module system reference mkOption fields, types, merge priorities and the option roots you will reach for most, verified against nixpkgs 26.11.
- Debugging guide Symptom to cause to command for language, flake, build and store failures, with every message captured on Nix 2.35.
- Glossary Forty-odd Nix terms in one or two sentences each, in the order you meet them.
- Resources The handful of Nix sources worth your time, one honest sentence each, and the ones to skip.