Vol(atile) NixOS — a stateless, flake-driven NixOS workstation

A declarative, performance-tuned, ephemeral NixOS configuration built on Nix Flakes and the Lix daemon. The root filesystem is a tmpfs wiped on every boot; all durable state is mapped onto /persist via impermanence. It adds a CachyOS low-latency kernel, UEFI Secure Boot (Lanzaboote), sops-nix secrets, isolated microvm.nix gateways, CUDA-accelerated local AI, and a niri + Noctalia v5 Wayland desktop.

📖 Documentation

Full documentation lives at → volnixos-wiki.pgs.sh

Topic
Architecture	Boot, impermanence, kernel, secrets
Networking	Tor net-gate & Tailscale MicroVMs
Desktop	niri, Noctalia, theming engine
Reference	Flake, Home Manager modules, dotfiles
Tooling	Makefile, Fish, agent toolchain

The docs source is in docs/ (MkDocs Material). Preview locally with make docs-serve.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/lowcache/volnixos.git ~/.nix-config
cd ~/.nix-config
make check          # nix flake check
make build          # build without switching
sudo make switch    # rebuild + switch (HOST=volnix)

Note

This is my personal, hardware-specific configuration (AMD Ryzen + hybrid AMD/NVIDIA GPU, ASUS laptop), published as a portfolio and reference — meant to be read and borrowed from, not installed wholesale. Treat it as proof-of-work, not a distro.

Layout

.nix-config/
├── flake.nix          # inputs, overlays, host (volnix), VM runners
├── Makefile           # canonical operations interface (make help)
├── nixos/             # system modules
├── home/              # Home Manager modules
├── dots/              # dotfiles (out-of-store symlinked to ~/.config)
├── scripts/           # agent toolchain (memd, tether, agent-scaffold)
├── docs/              # MkDocs Material documentation source
└── assets/            # banner / branding