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
