But it's worth noting that as with regular Linux distro, you can get easily switch the DE. I think it's only two lines of config.
this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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And unlike a regular Linux distro, you’ll have zero leftover systemd units or config files floating around in your FHS dirs. (You’ll have the binaries for Gnome sitting in /nix/store until you do a GC, so you can still quickly switch back if you want to.)
.. or config files floating around in your FHS dirs
Mostly true, but unless you're doing an impermanence setup, programs still poop random files all over the place. Especially in home and other various places like /var/lib /var/cache.
Yeah, home still gets ugly if you are adding/removing stuff all of the time.
I'm looking at adding impermanence to wipe everything every boot, and keep my non nix files (like games) in another partition.
switch
I don't think there is even a default DE. I think the graphical installer lets you choose GNOME, Plasma, or none.
Don't recall but you're probably right.
Want Gnome? services.displayManager.gdm.enable = true; services.desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;
Want KDE? services.displayManager.sddm.enable = true; services.displayManager.sddm.wayland.enable = true; services.desktopManager.plasma6.enable = true;
How does NixOS ship with anything? It's all about what you put in the configuration.nix. You even have to specify if you want a WM.
NixOS "ships with" whatever exists in nixpkgs. So you could read this as "nixpkgs channel 25.11 ships GNOME 49".
And you can see that is true, here: https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=25.11&show=gnome-shell&query=gnome-shell
I guess that was my point. It ships with whatever has been packaged up to now, and there is no "default" NixOS anything, not even the display manager.
As others have commented, the article is a little misleading. Especially to those not familiar with NixOS:
- "The desktop stack is updated to GNOME 49."
- "Under the hood, the release updates the Linux kernel to 6.17 (with 6.12 LTS also available)."
These changes have been made available through packages in the nixpkgs repo, branched to the 25.11 release.
However, NixOS doesn't "stack" GNOME into it. Nor does it carry specific Linux kernels "under the hood".
You can pin any version of any release of any listed package (including kernels) from the nixpkgs repo to your configuration. More specifically even with Flakes, but that's not even required, if that isn't your thing.
So for example, I am running a specific host with NixOS 25.11, and Linux kernel 6.17.58 (LTS). (There is a specific use case for me to do so on that particular host.) This runs out of the box due to how I've configured NixOS, which is precisely the point of Nix, you configure it how you want it.
I gotta try it because it just sounds like Linux already is which is possibly a good thing?
I tried installing it for fun and my /home/$user folder is empty. Is that normal? Like there’s no Desktop, Downloads, Documents, etc folders by default. I picked the GNOME desktop environment at install. Never seen that before.
This is normal. XDG dirs must be configured manually. Alternatively, home-manager has options for this.
Good to know! I've not seen any other distribution handle home folders that way. I've even installed previous versions of NixOS and don't remember ever needing to do that. Seems like an odd choice to me, but NixOS has a few of those so it's all good. Definitely not a beginner distro.
Probably not. There must be something missing in your configuration. Do you have createHome = true for your user?
When facing issues on nixos, you can easily just share your /etc/nixos/configuration.nix + a description of your error + logs and it'll provide useful context for people. We'll even be able to spin up a VM with your config to see if the bug can be recreated.
I have a home folder. It's just empty. To answer your question though, no createHome = true is not in my configuration.nix file. I could dump all that, but this is a fresh system. It's clearly an issue with the NixOS installer. I tried it on completely different hardware just now and have the same problem. I solved it by running this series of commands.
xdg-user-dirs-update
gio set ~/Desktop metadata::custom-icon-name user-desktop
gio set ~/Documents metadata::custom-icon-name folder-documents
gio set ~/Downloads metadata::custom-icon-name folder-download
gio set ~/Music metadata::custom-icon-name folder-music
gio set ~/Pictures metadata::custom-icon-name folder-pictures
gio set ~/Videos metadata::custom-icon-name folder-videos
gio set ~/Templates metadata::custom-icon-name folder-templates
gio set ~/Public metadata::custom-icon-name folder-publicshare
xdg-user-dirs-gtk-update
I guess it's fine, but not ideal. I could see that confusing the shit out of a more casual user.
When you say "nixos installer", do you mean the GUI nixos installer? If you have a github account, you can create a bug report. As a KDE user, this has never been a problem for me.
Yep, this one: https://channels.nixos.org/nixos-25.11/latest-nixos-graphical-x86_64-linux.iso. I don't have a GitHub account, but someone else said it's normal. So who knows!