Modern and Minimal Linux: NixOS and Noctalia and Labwc Flake

A NixOS 26.11 flake integrates the Noctalia V5 AI desktop shell with the Labwc Wayland compositor, Voxtype voice-to-text via Whisper.cpp, and AMD hardware optimizations, offering a declarative, minimal Linux desktop configuration. The setup includes AI-powered features such as an OSD recommender, color sync for WCAG-contrast window decorations, and offline voice typing triggered by Right Alt, alongside PipeWire audio, screen capture tools, and automatic Nix garbage collection.

Declarative NixOS 26.11 flake for a modern Wayland desktop — labwc compositor + Noctalia V5 AI desktop shell + Voxtype voice-to-text. Designed for AMD hardware GPU + CPU microcode with pure Wayland no XWayland . Drop your hardware-configuration.nix alongside the flake and rebuild. Labwc — lightweight Wayland compositor, 4 virtual desktops, multi-monitor DP-2 + eDP-1 Noctalia V5 — AI-powered shell panel, launcher, session, OSD recommender Voxtype — offline voice-to-text via Whisper.cpp ggml-base multilingual, ~142 MB , triggered by Right Alt Color sync — noctalia-labwc-theme-sync reads Noctalia's palette → WCAG-contrast window decorations → labwc --reconfigure greetd + tuigreet — auto-login TUI greeter with NixOS Blue theme PipeWire — audio with ALSA + PulseAudio compat, WirePlumber session manager Screen capture — Print screen → grim + slurp region select → satty annotation editor Night light — W-n toggles wlsunset 2500K , W-S-n kills it OBS-cmd — scene switching Alt-1..5 , Alt-e and recording toggle Alt-r Bluetooth — enabled no power-on-boot ZRAM — 50% of RAM, zstd compression AMD fine-tuning — amdgpu.runpm=0 fixes PSP LOAD TA , microcode updates, spectre v2=on GNOME Keyring + polkit-gnome — credential storage and privilege escalation Nix GC — automatic weekly, deletes generations older than 7 days GDK/icon fixes — Adwaita icon theme linked, Trash icon visible in Nautilus Compose key — Caps Lock as compose key Wayland-native XKB: Caps Lock as compose key SSH — OpenSSH server enabled sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake /etc/nixos nixos --accept-flake-config cd /etc/nixos nix flake update update flake.lock to latest inputs sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake . nixos --accept-flake-config The current user is g . To rename it, edit configuration.nix : - Change users.users.g to users.users.<newname line ~300 . - Update the initial session.user in services.greetd.settings line ~186 from "g" to "<newname " . - Rebuild with sudo nixos-rebuild switch and reboot. - The old home directory /home/g will remain — either symlink it or move contents. --accept-flake-config is required to trust the noctalia.cachix.org binary cache.- Noctalia is pinned via the cachix branch always points to the latest cached commit . - Bootloader: Limine not systemd-boot . hardware-configuration.nix is not in the repo — generate it with nixos-generate-config on your machine.