Day 1: Installing NixOS on my 2019 Macbook Pro

Here's everything I did to install NixOS on my Macbook Pro without ruining my existing macOS Ventura setup.

1. Created bootable media

• Downloaded Balena Etcher
• Downloaded NixOS ISO (GNOME, 64-bit Intel/AMD)
• Plugged in 16gb USB drive
• Ran Etcher to flash the NixOS ISO onto the USB drive (easy as 1-2-3)

1. Prepared a partition on my hard drive

• Couldn't use disk utility because it would only let me create APFS volumes
• Opened terminal
• Ran diskutil list
• Ran diskutil info /dev/disk0
• Ran diskutil apfs resizeContainer /dev/disk0s2 300g ExFAT "NixOS" 200gb

This took a little while.

1. Disabled the boot restriction security

• Shut down the mac
• Booted up, holding CMD+R to enter recovery mode
• At the top bar, chose Utilities>Startup Security Utility
• Chose No security for the first option
• Chose Allow booting from external media for the second option
• Closed the window
• Shut down

1. Got my peripherals ready

• Plugged in power cable
• Plugged in external mouse and keyboard
• Plugged in network cable via ethernet-usbc adapter

1. Ran the installer

• Booted up, holding Option key
• Chose EFI boot (my usb device)
• Ignored the menu that came up and disappeared in 10 seconds. If you press a key, the 10 second timer will be aborted and you'll have to manually select an option. Choose the first and hit enter
• Clicked next a few times and added my username, password, timezone, etc.
• I chose the Plasma desktop environment after comparing the visual preview to GNOME's in the setup wizard. I think people fight about this kind of stuff online, but I'm led to believe by one of the Reddit posts I saw that we can easily switch risk-free later on thanks to the power of Nix.
• Let it run and went upstairs for a few hours

1. Came back to my laptop and booted up NixOS

• Wondered how to get Wi-Fi working
• Wondered how to get Macbook keyboard, touch bar, and trackpad working
• Wondered how the heck I do anything on this weird OS