Obtaining NixOS

NixOS ISO images can be downloaded from the NixOS download page. There are a number of installation options. If you happen to have an optical drive and a spare CD, burning the image to CD and booting from that is probably the easiest option. Most people will need to prepare a USB stick to boot from. Booting from a USB Drive describes the preferred method to prepare a USB stick. A number of alternative methods are presented in the NixOS Wiki.

As an alternative to installing NixOS yourself, you can get a running NixOS system through several other means:

• Using virtual appliances in Open Virtualization Format (OVF) that can be imported into VirtualBox. These are available from the NixOS download page.
• Using AMIs for Amazon’s EC2. To find one for your region and instance type, please refer to the list of most recent AMIs.
• Using NixOps, the NixOS-based cloud deployment tool, which allows you to provision VirtualBox and EC2 NixOS instances from declarative specifications. Check out the NixOps homepage for details.