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Reference

Resources

The handful of Nix sources worth your time, one honest sentence each, and the ones to skip.

Not fetched or checked for uptime while writing this page; these are the canonical locations as of nixpkgs 26.11.

Learn

nix.dev https://nix.dev. The official tutorials; start with "Nix language basics" and "Module system deep dive". Unreachable from some networks; curl https://r.jina.ai/https://nix.dev/ returns a text rendering, or git clone https://github.com/NixOS/nix.dev and read the Markdown source.

Zero to Nix https://zero-to-nix.com. Determinate Systems' flake-first quickstart. Fast, modern, stops early; good for the first two hours.

Nix Pills https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/. Builds mkDerivation from scratch over twenty chapters. Old CLI, still the best explanation of what stdenv actually does.

NixOS & Flakes Book https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world. Community book covering a full flake-based NixOS plus home-manager setup, in the order you would actually do it. Opinionated and current.

Reference

Nix reference manual https://nix.dev/manual/nix. The CLI, the language, nix.conf, the store. Pick the version matching nix --version.

nixpkgs manual https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/unstable/. Builders, language frameworks, overlays, stdenv phases. The chapter on your language's builder is required reading before packaging.

NixOS manual https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/unstable/. Installation, nixos-rebuild, and the full option list as an appendix.

noogle.dev https://noogle.dev. Search lib and builtins by name or by type signature. The fastest way to find lib.mapAttrsToList when you only remember what it does.

search.nixos.org https://search.nixos.org. Packages and NixOS options, by channel. Shows the option's type, default, and the source file.

home-manager option search https://home-manager-options.extranix.com. Same for home-manager, with release and master toggles. Verify every programs.* name here.

wiki.nixos.org https://wiki.nixos.org. The official wiki since 2024. Hardware pages and "how do I X on NixOS" recipes. Not nixos.wiki, see below.

nixpkgs source https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs. When docs disagree with behaviour, the module file wins. Locally: nix eval --raw nixpkgs#path, then grep.

Follow

Determinate Systems blog https://determinate.systems/blog. Flakes, the installer, and Nix internals explained by people who work on them. Vendor, but accurate.

Discourse https://discourse.nixos.org. Announcements, RFC discussions, and the place to ask when the error message is not on the web.

Matrix #nix:nixos.org and #nixos:nixos.org. Live help; the search is poor, so ask, do not browse.

Skip

  • Paid Nix books and courses. Everything above is free and more current.
  • nixos.wiki. The old unofficial wiki; frozen and partially wrong. Use wiki.nixos.org.
  • Blog posts from before 2022 about the CLI. nix-env -i, channels, nix-shell -p without flakes; the concepts hold, the commands do not.
  • Anything recommending nix-env -iA for daily package installs. Use a dev shell, home.packages, or environment.systemPackages.