daily-email: add 2023-04-09

src/content/daily-email/2023-04-09.md

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+---
+title: >
+  Nix, NixOS, Home Manager, and WSL2
+pubDate: 2023-04-09
+permalink: >
+  archive/2023/04/09/nix-nixos-home-manager-and-wsl2
+tags:
+  - linux
+  - nix
+  - nixos
+  - wsl2
+---
+
+Although I've been using Linux for work computers for a lot longer, a few years ago, I switched from macOS and an Apple MacBook Pro to using Linux full-time on my personal computers.
+
+My current daily driver laptop is a Tuxedo InfinityBook that I've installed NixOS on.
+
+NixOS, as the name suggests, is a Linux operating system based on the Nix package manager. It has access to the 80,000+ packages in the `nixpkgs` repository and can still install and manage them, but also does a lot more including managing hardware.
+
+For user-level configuration, I use Home Manager. I can configure my home directory including user-specific packages and manage my dotfiles, creating files like `.gitconfig` and linking them to the required destination.
+
+Home Manager can be a NixOS module or a standalone tool - it can be added to NixOS or installed on any Linux distribution, even in WSL2, so I have the same packages that I need installed on every machine as well as having my dotfiles in the correct place and ready to be used.