Reproducing the NixOS Minimal ISO

[Arnout Engelen]

Hi,

On the heels of the NixOS 25.11 release, I reproduced the minimal
installation ISO again.

My approach is to take a NixOS VM from 2020, and then build the ISO (almost)
without relying on the binary cache. This means it builds essentially all of
the build-time dependencies and all of the items that make it into the ISO
from source, without directly relying on Nix-specific prebuilt packages. On
the other hand, NixOS is somewhat less strict than for example Debian in
requiring package 'sources' are actually sources, so a few builds (notably go)
are actually 'built' from upstream binary releases.

I put up a blog with more details, including how to replay yourself, at
https://arnout.engelen.eu/blog/reproducing-nixos-25.11-minimal-iso/


Cheers,

--
Arnout 'raboof' Engelen
Engelen Open Source
https://engelen.eu