🧬 Architecture

Volatile NixOS is a single flake (flake.nix) that builds one host (volnix) and two MicroVM runners. The defining property is statelessness: the root filesystem is a tmpfs rebuilt clean on every boot, with all durable data mapped onto /persist via impermanence.

graph TD
    HW["Hardware<br/>Ryzen + AMD iGPU / NVIDIA RTX 4050"] --> K["CachyOS Kernel<br/>preempt=full · threadirqs"]
    K --> LB["Lanzaboote<br/>UEFI Secure Boot"]
    K --> IMP["Impermanence<br/>tmpfs root /"]
    IMP --> P["/persist<br/>durable state"]
    LB --> NIX["NixOS · Lix daemon"]
    NIX --> HM["Home Manager<br/>user: lowcache"]
    HM --> NIRI["niri compositor<br/>greetd / tuigreet"]
    NIRI --> NOCT["Noctalia v5 shell"]
    NIX --> VM["microvm.nix guests"]
    VM --> TOR["net-gate · Tor proxy"]
    VM --> TS["tailscale-vm"]
    NIX --> WIN["QEMU/KVM · Windows 11 VM"]
    NIX --> AI["Ollama (CUDA) + Open WebUI"]
    NIX --> DK["Docker OCI · Fooocus"]
    P -. out-of-store symlinks .-> HM

The Lix daemon

The reference C++ Nix daemon is replaced by Lix. Lix is enabled directly from nixpkgs as pkgs.lixPackageSets.stable.lix (configured in nixos/configuration.nix). This replaces the former lix-module flake input, ensuring Lix is binary-cached and matches nixpkgs updates.

Layers

Layer	Mechanism	Page
Boot & integrity	Lanzaboote UEFI Secure Boot	Boot & Secure Boot
Statelessness	impermanence + /persist + symlinks	Impermanence
Performance	CachyOS kernel + sysctl tuning	Kernel & Performance
Secrets	sops-nix + age	Secrets
Isolation	microvm.nix gateways + QEMU/KVM Windows 11 VM (nixos/windows-vm.nix)	Networking
Desktop	niri + Noctalia v5	Desktop