NixOS templates project

Alex25 · October 10, 2026, 6:37am

Hello, dear Qubes community!

I want to introduce you to the NixOS templates project: GitHub - cuzrawr/qubes-nixos: Nixos deployment and templates for qubesOS · GitHub

This project was initially maded for friends, but it has grown much so I decided to share it with the community.
It should cover nearly everything needed to make the NixOS experience as smooth as possible under qubes.

( As far as I know, there have been a few partially working NixOS projects before, but mine was written completely from scratch, and everything has been tested against the stable Qubes OS release. )

There main idea was to avoid Qubes-specific patches as possible and make everything work as 1:1 similar with the stock Fedora or Debian templates ( so there are some decisions involving relinking that might look a bit weird at first glance, but I havent found a better way to handle them. )

And secondary goal = be user friendly in every possible way.
So, as of today, we have NixOS templates (stable and unstable) with the same basic software preinstalled as the stock Fedora and Debian templates ( firefox, xfce terminal, etc )

Nearly everything works out of the box:

github.com/cuzrawr/qubes-nixos

docs/testing.md

main

# Test results

Release [v0.1.0](https://github.com/cuzrawr/qubes-nixos/releases/tag/v0.1.0).
Final artifact checks: 2026-10-07.
Build source: [155d51a](https://github.com/cuzrawr/qubes-nixos/commit/155d51ab251e01c484949adeb064734ecd919711), signed tag `v0.1.0`.

## Test targets

| Component | Version |
| --- | --- |
| Qubes OS / Xen | 4.3.1 / 4.19.4, x86_64 |
| Stock Qubes VM kernel | `6.18.31-1.qubes.fc41.x86_64`, matching initramfs/modules |
| Stable nixpkgs | `5e2305d577ca00acbba631b05cb1094d172b29f3` (26.05) |
| Unstable nixpkgs | `e94cb152ed51bd6e24eb4a41f1460252beb52cd2` (26.11) |
| Build tool | Nix 2.32.1; image finalization also tested without KVM |

## Build and boot checks

| Check | Stable | Unstable |
| --- | --- | --- |

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Since the Qubes GUI doesnt support importing 3rd party custom templates repositories by just submiting URL, a few commands need to be executed to install my variants.

Everything is in the GitHub README for anyone interested.
I dont know what else to add here, as I think i covered most of the setup procedures and caveats there on github.

Also worth reading:

If you dont trust prebuilt RPMs ( which I completely understand, I wouldn’t either ), you can build them yourself - project supports that too.

Theres still a lot of upstream work needed if we want to make this feel more native to Qubes OS.

Feel free to ask anything.

Bug reports and suggestions are highly welcome!

And if it matters to anyone, yes, AI was used there.

sys-whonix · October 10, 2026, 10:42am

Thank you for the good work. I will definitely deeply look at it.