FAQ

A NixOS distribution for personal computing (em·a·nix — *Em*acs + *Nix*OS). It is the common core every host shares, organized around the IOSHI three-concern architecture.

It was called eminix until 2026-08-30, when it was renamed to sit closer to the two things it is actually built from.

No — it is a configuration, not an ISO. It is a Nix flake you apply to a NixOS installation. Install NixOS, then apply emanix.

Anything NixOS supports. It runs today on a laptop as a full graphical desktop, on a headless always-on server, and inside NixOS-WSL on a Windows machine — from one distribution with no per-shape variants, because shape is composed by the consuming flake rather than chosen from a menu here.

Hardware support is not in this repository at all; it is a module you write. That makes adding a machine a module, not a fork.

Technically yes, practically no. Emacs is the intelligence interface, not an editor choice — the compositor is written in Emacs Lisp and the agent tooling are Emacs packages. Removing Emacs leaves you with the substrate and the architecture, which is a reasonable thing to fork but is not emanix.

A Wayland compositor written in Emacs Lisp. Windows, workspaces and status bar are all Emacs, so keybindings and configuration are one language everywhere.

Three concerns:

• i — intelligence interface — the workspace
• os — operating system — the substrate
• hi — hardware / internet — the machine and its network, which the distribution deliberately does not ship

See Architecture.

cd ~/dotfiles
nix flake update
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#<host>

Updates move the flake's input pins. There is no apt upgrade.

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --rollback

Every rebuild creates a generation. The bootloader lists them too, which is the way out when a change breaks the graphical session.

Note what rollback does not restore: live-edited files symlinked out of the store, and any data a service mutated. See Build and Deploy.

Age-encrypted in the repository, decrypted at activation by each host's own SSH host key. See Secrets.

Because recipient status and use are different things. A host is granted decryption by the recipient list; whether it deploys the credential is a separate flag. Setting that flag false does not remove the host from the recipient list — edit the recipients and re-encrypt if that is what you want.

That file is a build product. Change the option that generates it and rebuild. This is correct declarative behaviour and it surprises everyone once.

Check the spelling. An unknown theme name falls back to the default rather than failing the build — a deliberate trade that keeps a typo from bricking a rebuild, at the cost of a typo being quiet. See Theming.

Four edits and a build: declare it in the flake, write its hardware module, describe its disk, create its host anchor. See Adding a Host.

It was named after an individual until 2026-08-14. The namespace is the distribution's public API, and naming it after a person made it both awkward to adopt and wrong in principle. See Options.

Yes, and the seams are documented for exactly that. The role structure, the module layout, the theme system and the host composer generalize. The shell aliases, agent instructions, git identity and mesh enrolment do not — replace them rather than inheriting them. See Adding a Host.

• Philosophy — why emanix exists
• Architecture — the three concerns
• Options — the full emanix.* reference
• NixOS Manual — the foundation
• Nix Flakes Wiki — the configuration system