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Show HN: NixOS-DGX-Spark – Nix and NixOS on the DGX Spark

63 points by graham33 ago | 16 comments

Try DGX Spark playbooks using Nix on DGX OS, or install NixOS on your DGX Spark for the full Nix experience. The repository provides USB images and a NixOS module with settings for DGX Spark systems.

This works on the NVIDIA DGX Spark itself and also on the Asus Ascent GX10.

See my 5 minute lightning talk from Planet Nix for an intro: https://youtu.be/AvK_gi_snJE?si=MPKv3iiuS9B5elIE

hamandcheese |next [-]

Slightly off topic, but Claude Code (and likely other models/harnesses) are incredibly effective at Nix. It can trivially self-verify, without side effects, which is a perfect match for an LLM.

If you've ever been put off by the difficulty of the language, it's worth checking it out again with AI assistance.

HellsMaddy |root |parent |next [-]

Absolutely. Running NixOS is a wonderful experience for this reason. NixOS + LLMs make it a breeze to make changes to your system, install and configure new software, and debug issues. Having every aspect of your system defined in a git repo is the perfect fit for agent harnesses.

I'll admit, even with LLMs to help, the Nix language and NixOS did have a rather steep learning curve, because it's quite different from anything I'd experienced before. But after getting the hang of it, I can't imagine going back to a "normal" OS and I'm very happy I put in the time to get over the initial friction.

aomix |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I got curious one Saturday and ported our monorepo to use Nix for build and test and release. It was a very pleasant process. I had to put aside to tackle more pressing things but I'm all in on using Nix in that capacity.

graham33 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Agreed, Claude has helped a lot with this project, and being able to iterate without side effects for system configuration changes is really a game changer for agents.

Loeffelmann |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I also love how with the right system prompt they can pull in tooling for what they currently need via a nix shell

colordrops |root |parent |previous [-]

I've one-shotted custom distributions built with Nix using AI. It's crazy how well AI and Nix fit together.

mkagenius |next |previous [-]

There is also a microvm.nix project which helped us support sandboxes with firecracker. So, whole ai workflow pipeline can now be nixos.

redrove |next |previous [-]

Been running this on a few Asus GX10 machines with k3s on top, it’s been great. I’m running the new deepseek.

Thank you for your work!

pixelesque |root |parent [-]

What quant are you using, and what tps are you getting with K3?

redrove |root |parent [-]

The FP8 version from DeepSeek themselves [0], around 1800 tps prefill and 45 tokens per second decode.

I’ve been running a custom VLLM image with b12x as well as nvfp4_ds_mla.

I would say it’s quite fantastic in day to day, I use it mostly in Hermes and sometimes for coding.

I have qwen 3.6 27b on an rtx 6000 pro as well so I use that as a workhorse in pi with DS as a reviewer/planner.

[0] https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731

Edit: I think you may have misread my post. k3s is NOT kimi k3, and I did mention I was running deepseek.

pixelesque |root |parent [-]

Thanks - yeah, sorry, I mis-read that as you using both DS and K3...

ronef |next |previous [-]

Huge plus to anyone interested in the space to check out what Graham built here!

If anyone is also interested on Nix/CUDA/Capital Markets/Flox, we recently did another case study in the space - https://flox.dev/blog/deploying-hardened-flox-nvidia-cuda-st...

nixie-tubes |next |previous [-]

This has been amazingly helpful for managing my DGX Spark! Thank you for all your time and effort into this project!

graham33 |root |parent [-]

Good to hear, thanks!

thenobsta |next |previous [-]

This is incredible. I have a Jetson lying around and will try to it out on this. I use it to play with vision models, not LLMs, and have been wanting a better way to manage the machine.

haunter |next |previous [-]

Thanks for sharing, saving this for when I get a DGX Spark

legastenigga |next |previous [-]

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hamza7159 |previous [-]

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