Graphical Nix applications on non-NixOS systems December 21, 2025 on svin 🐝

AI was used for grammatical corrections and formatting suggestions.

This is a guide on setting up Nix on a non-NixOS system with graphical application support.

The main reason you might want to do this is to take advantage of the large Nix package repositories without installing untrusted third-party repositories that could potentially damage your system.

Note: you could also do damage to your system via Nix,but let’s ignore that for now.

Requirements

Installing and setting up Nix

While you could use your distribution’s Nix package, I recommend installing Determinate Nix, as it enables flakes by default. That said, this choice ultimately comes down to personal preference.

curl -fsSL https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- install
Side note: if you are using SDDM, make sure to limit the maximum user UID to something like 2000. A reasonable amount as most home computers don't have over 1000 desktop users.

By default it is set to 60000, and this installer will create a large number of users, which will cause issues for SDDM.

In KDE this can be done via the SDDM KCM.

You can either restart your terminal or source the following script to immediately gain access to the nix command:

. /nix/var/nix/profiles/default/etc/profile.d/nix-daemon.sh

Setting up Home Manager

Create a directory (I named mine hm) where your personal Home Manager flake configuration will live. Inside that directory, run:

nix run nixpkgs#home-manager init .

This will create both a flake.nix and a home.nix file.

Now build and apply the configuration:

nix run nixpkgs#home-manager -- switch --flake .
Note: after running this command, **home-manager** will be directly accessible in your PATH.

This is due to the programs.home-manager.enable = true; option in your home.nix configuration. Which you’ll see bellow.

If you do not want to set up graphical Nix applications on your non-NixOS system, you can stop here.

Setting up graphical Nix applications on a non-NixOS system

Edit your home.nix file and add the following options:

targets.genericLinux.enable = true;
targets.genericLinux.gpu.enable = true;

Ignoring comments, your file should look roughly like this:

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

{
  targets.genericLinux.enable = true;
  targets.genericLinux.gpu.enable = true;

  home.username = "username";
  home.homeDirectory = "/home/username";

  home.stateVersion = "25.11";

  home.packages = [
  ];

  home.file = {
  };

  home.sessionVariables = {
  };

  programs.home-manager.enable = true;
}

At this point, you can add a graphical application to home.packages, such as pkgs.foot for the Foot terminal.

Rebuild your configuration:

home-manager switch --flake .

Finally, enable the systemd service required for non-NixOS GPU support:

sudo /nix/store/*-non-nixos-gpu/bin/non-nixos-gpu-setup

You should only need to run this once.

At this point, graphical applications may already work. If not, reboot your system to be safe.

Additional options for desktop integration

The first time you set this up, you may need to restart your desktop session. After that, it should no longer be necessary. However I have found that I frequently end up using the update-desktop-database command.

NVIDIA (proprietary drivers)

If you are using proprietary NVIDIA drivers, refer to the official Home Manager GPU configuration guide.

The process is significantly more involved.

I can’t provide an NVIDIA guide myself, as I have no system with an an NVIDIA GPU in order to test it.

Additional information:

Vimjoyer on Youtube has some great videos on Nix.