Install on NixOS (community maintained)

The community-maintained singularity-flake packages the desktop and exposes a small NixOS module, so you can enable it with a single option. It builds the full desktop from source, updating on a daily basis.

Pre-release: install at your own risk

Singularity is in active development. Building and installing it touches your system and carries real risk: it has been tested on several machines, but there is no guarantee it will not break something, or, worse, leave the device unable to boot. In any case you might need to roll back to a previous generation if your setup is impacted negatively and wait for an update

Community maintained

This flake is maintained by the community, not the Singularity core team. If a build breaks, or a piece of the desktop does not behave the way the rest of these docs describe, please report it in the flake’s repository first, not upstream.

Add the flake

Add it to your flake inputs, import the NixOS module it ships, and enable it:

{
  inputs.singularity-desktop.url = "github:mateoalfaro/singularity-flake";

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, singularity-desktop, ... }: {
    nixosConfigurations.myhost = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      system = "x86_64-linux";
      modules = [
        singularity-desktop.nixosModules.default
      ];
    };
  };
}

{ ... }:

{
  programs.singularity-desktop = {
    enable = true;

    # Optional: you can also exclude bundled applications from the system profile.
    excludePackages = with pkgs; [
      singularity-calculator
      singularity-music
      singularity-store
    ];

    greeter = {
      enable = true; # Enables the singularity greeter (default = false)
      background = /path/to/image.jpg # You can also customize greetd by replacing the default background image (default = stock wallpaper)
    };
  };
}

Then rebuild and switch:

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .

Once built, the session shows up in your display manager. Log out then pick the Singularity session and log back in. Note: In some cases, when you update the flake, you may need to reboot to see certain changes take effect.

Try it without installing

you can also run the desktop directly from the flake, without touching your system config:

nix run github:mateoalfaro/singularity-flake

Or build it locally first:

nix build github:mateoalfaro/singularity-flake

See Install for the general build-from-source flow the flake automates, and First boot for what to do once everything is up and running.