moonix

NixOS configuration for a scrollable-tiling Wayland desktop: niri as the compositor, Quickshell as the bar and launcher, moongreet as the login greeter, moonlock as the screen locker, Catppuccin Mocha throughout.

Ships Nix packages for the components that are not in nixpkgs — moonlock, moongreet, moonset, stasis, sweet-cursors — and NixOS modules that assemble them into a working session.

The XDG configuration files (niri, Quickshell, foot, GTK, Qt) come from the moonarch repository, which is consumed as a flake input. One set of config files therefore stays valid on both NixOS and Arch.

Layout

flake.nix            Inputs and outputs
pkgs/                Build recipes
  moonlock.nix       screen locker (GTK4, PAM, fingerprint)
  moongreet.nix      greetd greeter
  moonset.nix        session power menu
  stasis.nix         idle manager
  sweet-cursors.nix  cursor theme
modules/
  desktop.nix        /etc deployment, package set, theme
  greetd.nix         greetd + moongreet
  services.nix       systemd system and user services
hosts/
  testvm/            QEMU test VM
  thinkpad/          ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 (AMD)

nixosModules.moonarch is the entry point: it imports all three modules and hands them the packages and the config source.

Usage

Build a single package:

nix build .#moonlock

Build a whole system without activating it:

nix build .#nixosConfigurations.testvm.config.system.build.toplevel

Activate:

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#testvm

Installing on a machine

The disk layout is not declared here. The graphical installer handles partitioning, encryption and hardware detection, and produces the one file that cannot be written in advance: hardware-configuration.nix with the machine's UUIDs, LUKS devices and kernel modules.

1. Boot the NixOS ISO and run the installer. Choose dkressler as the user name — that is what hosts/thinkpad/default.nix declares. Pick btrfs, snapper expects it.

2. Reboot into the fresh system. It runs on the generated configuration, without this repo.

3. Enable flakes and install git — neither is available yet:

   sudo nano /etc/nixos/configuration.nix
   #   nix.settings.experimental-features = [ "nix-command" "flakes" ];
   #   environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ git ];
   sudo nixos-rebuild switch
   

4. Clone this repo and take over the hardware file:

   git clone https://gitea.moonarch.de/nevaforget/moonix.git
   cp /etc/nixos/hardware-configuration.nix moonix/hosts/thinkpad/
   

5. Add the import to hosts/thinkpad/default.nix:

   imports = [ ./hardware-configuration.nix ];
   

6. Switch and reboot:

   sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake ~/moonix#thinkpad
   

If step 6 breaks the system, pick the previous generation in the boot menu — the installer's configuration stays available as generation 1.

The nixos-hardware profile for the T14 Gen 3 (AMD) is already wired up: firmware, power management and graphics quirks come with it.

Until step 5 is done, nixosConfigurations.thinkpad does not evaluate:

error: Failed assertions:
- The 'fileSystems' option does not specify your root file system.

That is expected — the filesystems live in hardware-configuration.nix.

Version bumps

The application repos are pinned to release tags. After tagging a new version:

# adjust the tag in flake.nix, then
nix flake update moonlock

Configuration files

Config files are deployed unchanged wherever possible. Three are generated instead, because they contain a path that does not exist under Nix:

File	Reason
moongreet.toml	wallpaper path, rewritten to the store path
waypaper/config.ini	wallpaper path, rewritten and seeded into $HOME
fontconfig defaults	/etc/fonts/conf.d is owned by the NixOS module

kanshi/config is not deployed: the file is empty, kanshi rejects it and restarts in a loop. Monitor profiles are machine specific and belong in ~/.config/kanshi/config; the service starts only when that file exists.

Programs that read only from $HOME and have no system-wide fallback get a copy seeded through systemd.user.tmpfiles with the C directive, which never overwrites later edits.

Test VM

hosts/testvm targets a QEMU guest. The launcher script lives outside this repo at ~/VMs/moonix-vm.sh.

It deliberately contains no testing shortcuts — no passwordless sudo, no SSH password authentication. Set those at runtime when needed, for example through a drop-in under /run/systemd/system/, so they do not end up in version control.

The guest needs a 3D capable virtio GPU: niri's TTY backend fails every buffer import with Error::DeviceMissing otherwise, and software rendering is not a workaround. On the current host that path has twice triggered an amdgpu hard recovery, killing the QEMU process — shut the VM down when not testing.

Known gaps

Four entry points from the niri config and the helper scripts call a launcher that is not installed here, and therefore do nothing:

Entry point	Function
Super+C	clipboard history
moonarch-sink-switcher	audio sink picker
moonarch-vpn	VPN picker
moonarch-cpugov	CPU governor picker

cliphist records the clipboard, so only the picker front-end is missing.