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cleverca22
not-os
Nix2016–2026
cleverca22 / not-os

not-os

An operating system generator, based on NixOS, that, given a config, outputs a small (47 MB), read-only squashfs for a runit-based operating system, with support for iPXE and signed boot.

Systems & Infrastructure
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
5Distinct people
11Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

An operating system generator, based on NixOS, that, given a config, outputs a small (47 MB), read-only squashfs for a runit-based operating system, with support for iPXE and signed boot.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year11 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-08-08 21:16:25 UTC to 2026-06-25 02:52:41 UTC.

012342016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

11 sources
isityettime·Jun 25, 2026
For Nixers, this isn't painful; it's magical! :'D One of the great joys of NixOS is that configuration of existing features is continuous with development of new features. Both are just NixOS modules. In the same way, configuring your desktop is continuous with configuring a server is continuous with preparing a netboot image for an embedded device. If you know how to configure a NixOS desktop, you also know how to prepare your own custom NixOS install media. If you want it to, Nix can cure the stomach ache HCL gives you when you write Terraform. Nixpkgs is also the largest collection of packages in existence.¹ Anything you could want to throw into an image is likely already there. The author of the blog post is already a Nixpkgs/NixOS contributor, too, so they might also be thinking "some of the improvements I make in shrinking dependenc
Read the rest
y closures or finding deeper ways to turn off certain features are potentially upstreamable". And even if the experiment is a wash, in exploring this kind of (ab)use of NixOS for generating tiny images, a NixOS user is also learning more about the dependency relations and other structure of the NixOS systems they're already running, which might be interesting or rewarding. I'm not saying that as a Nix enthusiast I'd never use Buildroot or Yocto, but I understand the appeal of exploring how far NixOS can be pushed for this and how easy or hard it is to do. While we're here we should also note that NixOS isn't really the Nix tool for this job anyway. There's a cool project called not-os² where minimization is one of the goals that has already succeeded in getting the image size down to < 50 MB. There's also a project targeting commodity wifi routers called Liminix, which likewise takes some NixOS ideas and uses them to produce teeny-tiny images, (presumably even smaller than not-os, given many of the target devices don't include so much as 50 MB of flash). -- 1: https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/nonunique 2: https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os 3: https://www.liminix.org/
In I can haz smoller NixOS ISOs?
pxc·Oct 2, 2024
> I was trying to bring NixOS to a bare minimum, which is an exercise similar to building containers with the bare minimum required for the software in the container to run. I think this is a worthy endeavour. I think we have all the tools in regular non-docker, non-kubernetes linux to get to a similar outcome, except we won’t need docker or kubernetes or whatever in this new land, thus removing quite a bunch of complexity from the systems we build. > But doing it on top of NixOS currently feels like a bad path to take. The author of this blog post might be interested in playing with not-os, another, much smaller OS built with Nix: https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os Could be a decent source of inspiration!
In NixOS is a good server OS, except when it isn't
Ericson2314·Dec 30, 2021
oh oops, I think I was intending to type "crowd source" but I really met "crowd fund". I do want to finish my FreeBSD cross PR, but is is hard. We already have NetBSD working, including building the kernel, so I think it is better to start there. I opened https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os/issues/16 because I think that would be the absolute easiest first step, with the fewest moving parts. But I don't know how kernels, even Linux, are packaged into bootable thingies at all.
In Gobolinux : Redefining Linux filesystem hierarchy
pxc·Jun 25, 2021
tl;dr: here are three commercial embedded NixOS uses and a couple of other embedded NixOS projects 1. LumiGuide uses NixOS for their embedded systems, which track automatic bicycle rentals at little solar-powered stations IIRC: https://av.tib.eu/media/39625 (also some coverage here: https://www.worksonarm.com/blog/nixos/ ) 2. Yakkertech uses NixOS for their embedded systems, which do baseball pitch tracking: https://av.tib.eu/media/50713 3. Swift Navigation uses NixOS for CI/CD for the embedded systems they use for GPS and navigation: https://blog.swiftnav.com/using-nixos-to-manage-hardware-tes... I'd only heard of the first two, and discover the third just now. There are also two downstream distros/related projects that target embedded systems, but idk how much commercial use they've yet seen, if any: a. https://github.com/telent/nixwrt
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b. https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os
In Mobile NixOS
takeda·Jun 3, 2021
It's like an OS that has builtin salt/ansible/chef/puppet. Because Nix language describe the OS instead of what to change/configure it's superior to these tools, and solves the problem that supposedly same machines are drifting apart. For example if in the CM you tell it to install a package, then change your mind and remove the entry that does it. The package will remain installed. With NixOS if you remove the package from configuration, it's gone. I personally really like Nix's building capability. For example I can use it to generate a minimal docker container. It requires some knowledge, but I can also modify compilation options in dependencies (like remove unneeded functionality). It looks like there's also an option to similarly build lightweight OS images[1]. I haven't tried it yet but looks cool. [1] https://github.com/cleverca22/
Read the rest
not-os
In NixOS 21.05
takeda·Jun 2, 2021
Yes, it's extremely powerful once you truly understand Nix. There are efforts to improve documentation, but it still is lacking (I think the biggest problem is that Nix is so big, not just the OS but it can be utilized as a build system). Just with NixOS is not exactly clear how can you for example build your custom image. I think https://nix.dev/ is approaching the documentation from the right direction. There are also many pieces that people built that you need to find. For example some things that I found accidentally: * https://github.com/nix-community/poetry2nix * https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle * https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os Unfortunately those side projects often have even worse documentation.
In NixOS 21.05
Ericson2314·Aug 22, 2016
Overall, I don't think the situation is as dire as you say it is, but I do understand why you think these things. > I feel like Nix lacks a clear vision of its future. There's various high-level plans that I think have a decent consensus, but not enough people have authority to make things happen. This means that more interesting PRs often rot. > focuses on desktop systems Nobody actually prioritizes desktops over servers, and the core design is quite agnostic, but because Nix is over a decade old, lots of old code and documentation do make it seem this way. > yet apart from Linux no other server systems are officially supported Other unices work do for userland Nix, and darwin has official binaries which would be the moral equivalent of official support. Also check out https://github.com/triton/triton a fork of nixpkgs which aims to have
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a NixOS work with FreeBSD kernel, and https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os to better make immutable OS images.
In Reflections on NixOS

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