The Omarchy desktop, declared

Why this matters

Omarchy is a curated set of Arch packages and dotfiles. On NixOS the same desktop is one module you can evaluate on Arch today, boot in a VM tomorrow, and install on the laptop when the VM behaves. This lesson is the laptop's configuration.nix minus hardware-configuration.nix. Every option below was evaluated against your pinned nixpkgs.

Concept

The whole thing

{ pkgs, ... }:
{
  boot.loader.limine.enable = true;
  boot.loader.efi.canTouchEfiVariables = true;
  boot.initrd.luks.devices.cryptroot = {
    device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/0000-REPLACE-ME";
    allowDiscards = true;
  };
  fileSystems."/" = {
    device = "/dev/mapper/cryptroot";
    fsType = "btrfs";
    options = [ "subvol=@" "compress=zstd" "noatime" ];
  };
  fileSystems."/home" = {
    device = "/dev/mapper/cryptroot";
    fsType = "btrfs";
    options = [ "subvol=@home" "compress=zstd" "noatime" ];
  };
  fileSystems."/boot" = {
    device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/1111-REPLACE";
    fsType = "vfat";
  };
  networking.hostName = "laptop";
  networking.networkmanager.enable = true;
  programs.hyprland.enable = true;
  programs.hyprland.withUWSM = true;
  hardware.graphics.enable = true;
  services.pipewire = {
    enable = true;
    alsa.enable = true;
    pulse.enable = true;
  };
  services.greetd = {
    enable = true;
    settings.default_session.command = "${pkgs.tuigreet}/bin/tuigreet --time --cmd 'uwsm start hyprland-uwsm.desktop'";
  };
  fonts.packages = [ pkgs.nerd-fonts.jetbrains-mono pkgs.noto-fonts pkgs.noto-fonts-color-emoji ];
  programs.nix-ld.enable = true;
  programs.appimage = { enable = true; binfmt = true; };
  users.users.dawit = {
    isNormalUser = true;
    extraGroups = [ "wheel" "networkmanager" "video" ];
    shell = pkgs.fish;
  };
  programs.fish.enable = true;
  system.stateVersion = "25.11";
}

Boot and disk

boot.loader.limine.enable exists; so does systemd-boot. Both read generations from the system profile and show them as entries. boot.initrd.luks.devices.<name> opens the LUKS container in the initrd; allowDiscards passes TRIM through for the SSD. btrfs subvolumes are plain fileSystems entries with the same device and a subvol= mount option. The UUIDs come from blkid during install; nixos-generate-config writes them into hardware-configuration.nix, which is why that file exists.

Session

programs.hyprland.enable installs Hyprland 0.56.2 (your lock) and, as verified, sets xdg.portal.extraPortals to:

["/nix/store/...-xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland-1.4.1","/nix/store/...-xdg-desktop-portal-gtk-1.15.3"]

Portals are what make screen sharing and file pickers work under Wayland. You did not configure them; the module did. withUWSM wraps the session in a systemd user session, which is what Omarchy does too.

services.greetd is the display manager. tuigreet is a TUI greeter; the rendered settings:

{"default_session":{"command":"/nix/store/...-tuigreet-0.11.1/bin/tuigreet --time --cmd 'uwsm start hyprland-uwsm.desktop'","user":"greeter"},"terminal":{"vt":1}}

user = "greeter" was added by the module as a mkDefault. The package is top-level pkgs.tuigreet; the older pkgs.greetd.tuigreet path no longer exists in this revision.

Audio, graphics, fonts

services.pipewire with alsa and pulse compatibility replaces PulseAudio. hardware.graphics.enable is the current name; hardware.opengl.enable is kept as a rename alias and still evaluates without a warning in 26.11, but new configs should use graphics. Add hardware.graphics.enable32Bit = true only for Steam.

fonts.packages is a list. The module appends defaults (enableDefaultPackages), which is why the evaluated list has eleven entries starting with yours:

["nerd-fonts-jetbrains-mono-3.5.0+2.304","noto-fonts-2026.09.01","noto-fonts-color-emoji-2.051","dejavu-fonts-2.37",...]

Waybar, Walker, the rest: home-manager

Waybar is per-user configuration. In your home-manager module:

{ pkgs, ... }:
{
  programs.waybar = {
    enable = true;
    systemd.enable = true;
    settings.mainBar = {
      layer = "top";
      modules-left = [ "hyprland/workspaces" ];
      modules-right = [ "pulseaudio" "battery" "clock" ];
    };
    style = ''
      * { font-family: "JetBrainsMono Nerd Font"; }
    '';
  };

  home.packages = [ pkgs.walker pkgs.mako pkgs.hyprlock pkgs.hypridle ];
}

Verify: programs.waybar.settings, .style and .systemd.enable at https://home-manager-options.extranix.com. walker, mako, hyprlock, hypridle all exist in your pinned nixpkgs. Your existing ~/.config/hypr can stay a plain directory via mkOutOfStoreSymlink; see Migrate from chezmoi.

What is harder than Arch

Honest list.

• AUR-only software. If it is not in nixpkgs, you package it. Check search.nixos.org first; most of Omarchy's set is there.
• Prebuilt binaries that expect /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2. They fail with "No such file or directory" on NixOS because that path does not exist. programs.nix-ld.enable provides a shim so downloaded binaries like VS Code extensions, mise-installed Node, or pnpm-fetched native modules run. steam-run <binary> wraps anything in an FHS environment as a last resort. programs.appimage with binfmt makes AppImages double-clickable.
• Omarchy's own scripts assume pacman and yay. They will not run; you reimplement what you use as options or home.packages.
• mise works, with nix-ld, but the Nix way is a devShell per project. See Dev shells, deep. Expect to run both for a while.
• Kernel and firmware updates are tied to the nixpkgs revision in your lock, not to a daily pacman -Syu. Slower on Arch's scale, more predictable.

Try it

1. Save the module as desktop.nix, add a laptop host to your Try-it flake with it, and evaluate the portals list:

nix eval --json .#nixosConfigurations.laptop.config.xdg.portal.extraPortals

Two store paths, hyprland and gtk portals, as above.

2. Evaluate the greeter command: .config.services.greetd.settings.default_session.command. It contains a tuigreet-0.11.1 store path in your lock.

3. Check the VM runner name is run-laptop-vm, then follow Test NixOS in a VM first to boot it. Hyprland under QEMU works with the default graphics; it is slow but enough to see Waybar and the greeter.

Exercise

Add Bluetooth and a swap file to the module. Evaluate hardware.bluetooth.enable and swapDevices.

{
  hardware.bluetooth.enable = true;
  services.blueman.enable = true;
  swapDevices = [
    { device = "/swap/swapfile"; size = 8192; }
  ];
}

Trap

Copying a hardware-configuration.nix from the VM or another machine. The VM's generated file has virtual disks and no LUKS; the laptop's has UUIDs that exist nowhere else. A wrong by-uuid means the initrd waits for a device that never appears and drops to an emergency shell. Always generate it on the target hardware with nixos-generate-config, and read it before importing it.

Checkpoint