Start here
What are you drinking?
Pick where you’re coming from and I’ll pour the guide that fits. If you’re not sure, order the Windows one. It assumes no Linux experience.
Coming off Windows? You're in good company.
Think of NixOS as System Restore that actually works, plus an app list you can carry to any PC. The guide also lists what won’t come with you.
Read the Windows guide- A graphical installer, so you can get going without a terminal
- Steam, Discord, browsers and OBS are one line each
- What to expect with anti-cheat games, Adobe and Office
You already like control. Now keep it.
Your carefully tuned setup, as code you can git push. No more archaeology in /etc trying to remember what you changed last year.
Read the Arch guide- Hyprland and sway setups kept in your config
- The unstable channel feels like a rolling release
- Overlays and flakes fill the role the AUR played
Same desktops, fewer surprises.
GNOME and KDE work just as you know them, but upgrades are all-or-nothing, so a bad one never leaves you stranded halfway.
Read the Ubuntu guide- Stable releases every May and November
- “apt install” becomes one line in a file
- Try it in a VM first, no commitment
Yes, it games.
Steam with Proton, Heroic, Lutris and gamemode, switched on in a handful of lines. Your library comes with you, mostly.
Read the gaming guide- AMD works out of the box; NVIDIA is one short block
- Proton runs a large share of the Steam library
- Games with kernel anti-cheat still won’t run
Before you start
- Try it in a virtual machine first. Nothing on your computer changes, and you can break it as much as you like.
- You don’t need to learn the Nix language up front. Most of a NixOS config reads like a settings file:
something.enable = true;. - Keep search.nixos.org open. It lists every package and every setting.
- Stuck? Ask on the NixOS Discourse. Beginner questions are welcome there.