deploy: 236199a818

blog/2021/09/08/why-i-threw-out-my-dotfiles/index.html

@@ -269,8 +269,11 @@ nix-shell <span style=color:#e6db74>&#39;&lt;home-manager&gt;&#39;</span> -A ins
 <p>If you run <code>zsh</code>, you should see that you have <a href=https://starship.rs/>starship</a> and access to several other utils such as <code>rg</code>, <code>fd</code>, and <code>exa</code>.</p>
 <p>This basic configuration above is also defining your <code>~/.config/git/config</code> and <code>.zshrc</code>. If you already have either of these files, home-manager will complain about them already existing.</p>
 <p>If you run <code>cat ~/.zshrc</code>, you will see the way these configuration files are generated.</p>
+<p>You can extend this configuration for programs such as (neo)vim, emacs, alacritty, ssh, etc. To see other programs, take a look at <a href=https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/tree/master/modules/programs>home-manager/modules/programs</a>.</p>
+<h2 id=gateway-to-nix>Gateway To Nix</h2>
+<p>In ways, home-manager can be seen as a gateway to the nix ecosystem. If you have enjoyed the way you can declare user configuration with home-manager, you may be interested in expanding your configuration to include other system dependencies and configuration. For example, in Linux you can define your entire system&rsquo;s configuration (including the kernel, kernel modules, networking, filesystems, etc) in nix. For macOS, there is <a href=https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin>nix-darwin</a> that includes nix modules for configuring launchd, dock, and other preferences and services. You may also want to check out <a href=https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Flakes>Nix Flakes</a>: a more recent feature that allows you declare dependencies, and have them automatically pinned and hashed in <code>flake.lock</code>, similar to that of many modern package managers.</p>
 <h2 id=wrapping-up>Wrapping up</h2>
-<p>And that is how you can get started defining your user configuration with home-manager. You can extend this configuration for programs such as (neo)vim, emacs, alacritty, ssh, etc. To see other programs, take a look at <a href=https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/tree/master/modules/programs>home-manager/modules/programs</a>.</p>
+<p>The title of this post is slightly misleading, since it&rsquo;s possible to retain some of your dotfiles and have them intermingle with home-manager by including them alongside nix. The idea of defining user configuration using nix can provide a clean way to maintain your configuration, and allow it to be portable across platforms. Is it worth the effort to migrate away from more from shell scripts and dotfiles? I&rsquo;d say so.</p>
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