Aspen

"A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren't shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. What else do you want to call it? Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware."

Declarative NixOS configuration built around Flakes, Niri, and Home Manager.

Hosts

Host	Hardware	User	Purpose
branch	Laptop	worker	Mobile
taproot	AMD Ryzen 5 5500 + RX 6600	arborist	Desktop

Stack

• WM: Niri (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)
• Greeter: greetd + ReGreet (GTK4, Catppuccin themed via Stylix)
• Theming: Stylix
• Shell: Noctalia
• Editor: NixVim
• Browser: Helium / Schizofox
• Launcher: Noctalia launcher
• Extras: Flatpak (nix-flatpak), bwrapper

Rebuild

# Laptop
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake /etc/nixos#branch

# Desktop
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake /etc/nixos#taproot

Structure

/etc/nixos/
├── flake.nix                   # Entry point & host definitions
├── flake.lock                  # Pinned input versions
├── configuration.nix           # Shared system config (network, services, nix settings)
├── wallpaper.jpg               # Stylix wallpaper (gitignored — add your own)
├── hosts/
│   ├── branch/default.nix      # Laptop: hardware, filesystems, lidarr, syncthing
│   ├── taproot/
│   │   ├── default.nix         # Desktop: hardware, filesystems, dual-boot
│   │   └── INSTALL.md          # Reinstall guide for this host
│   └── template/default.nix    # Standalone reference template
├── home/
│   ├── common/
│   │   ├── default.nix         # Aggregator: imports all common HM modules
│   │   ├── niri.nix            # Niri compositor config
│   │   ├── shell.nix           # Zsh + starship config
│   │   ├── packages.nix        # Shared user packages
│   │   ├── apps.nix            # GTK, Qt, mpv, xdg config
│   │   ├── dev.nix             # Dev tooling
│   │   ├── opencode.nix        # OpenCode TUI config
│   │   ├── noctalia.nix        # Noctalia shell config
│   │   ├── compositor/         # Wayland components
│   │   │   ├── fuzzel.nix      # App launcher (Catppuccin themed)
│   │   │   ├── emoji.txt       # Emoji data for fuzzel picker
│   │   │   ├── niri-binds.nix  # Keybindings
│   │   │   ├── niri-rules.nix  # Window rules
│   │   │   └── idle.nix        # Screen lock / idle
│   │   ├── apps/               # App sub-modules
│   │   │   ├── default.nix     # Aggregator
│   │   │   ├── comms.nix       # Thunderbird, Signal
│   │   │   ├── media.nix       # MPD, playerctld
│   │   │   ├── utils.nix       # KeePassXC, syncthing, nextcloud
│   │   │   └── xdg.nix         # MIME defaults
│   │   └── shell/tools.nix     # bat, eza, fzf, direnv, tmux, lazygit
│   ├── branch/home.nix         # Laptop user: worker
│   └── taproot/home.nix        # Desktop user: arborist
├── modules/
│   ├── hardware/default.nix    # Typed hardware abstraction (CPU, GPU, storage, etc.)
│   ├── profiles/
│   │   ├── desktop.nix         # Desktop optimizations
│   │   └── laptop.nix          # Laptop power/touchpad settings
│   ├── overlays/
│   │   └── niri-sidebar.nix    # niri-sidebar package overlay
│   └── sandbox/                # Bubblewrap-sandboxed app configs
│       ├── browsers/           # Helium, LibreWolf, Tor
│       ├── comms/              # Signal, Thunderbird
│       ├── wallets/            # Electrum, Monero
│       ├── other/              # KeePassXC, mpv, Nicotine+, Obsidian
│       └── presets/            # Shared presets (browser, desktop-base, sensitive)
└── README.md

Dev Shell

nix develop /etc/nixos

Provides git, vim, nixfmt, and uv.