Now that I have figured out how to get all the Windows applications I
previously used working under Wine (including those that didn't work in
the virtual machine after trying to manually install dependencies) there
is no reason for me to use vmware.
Using NixOS for Windows applications allows them to be used with
systemd-nspawn containers, thus achieving things like isolation, private
networks, impermanence, and more. All of this without having to maintain
a separate operating system install.
No ports need to be forwarded right now, however this is a good example
for when ports need to be forwarded from a container to the host in the
future.
This *works*, and it's possible to edit files in one virtual machine
while having those files instantly be updated in all other virtual
machines. Note that the host will also have access to the files, which
ultimately means that directory sharing is quite useful (and convenient).
This was a change to make networks somewhat usable, and it works to a
good extent, however I ultimately decided against using networks due to
their missing flake support.
This is a working example of using the modules in our existing
configuration to start a network of virtual machines with
nixos-build-vms. Note that VMs take longer to start up in this case than
nixos-rebuild build-vm, and that said VMs may lack certain functionality
(such as dynamic resolution in GNOME) that would otherwise be present
with build-vm.
Although networks are certainly cute (and I'm glad that I feel familiar
with them thanks to my better understanding of Nix), they do seem less
convenient than nixos-rebuild build-vm and don't appear to support Nix
flakes. Networks therefore seem more useful for running multiple one-off
services that couldn't otherwise be ran in a container.
This fixes an issue where some applications were using the default fonts
from nixpkgs instead of the fonts specified in the system configuration.
Notably, this led to the use of "TeX Gyre Heros" for body text, which
made distinguishing between i/I/l problematic at smaller font sizes.
Possibly useful for setting up computers with GNOME. The main advantage
GNOME has is the ability to have a consistent environment in both X11
and Wayland, which is useful to test whether or not something only works
in X11.
