StarlightOS / README.md

# Starlight OS

*name, and the entire README for that matter, is temporary*

An operating system based on nixOS aimed at reviving your old hardware
as homeservers or Network-Attached-Storage (NAS), without locking you
into one distribution.

## What's different?

Many distributions designed for this purpose are corporate-controlled
and in a tight ecosystem. This makes it more difficult to migrate out
of, difficult to peek inside of and understand the system.
Additionally, it complicates porting new software, as it often
requires writing platform-specific template and metadata files. Many
of these projects also don't support ARM64 outside of Raspberry Pi
images.

To solve all of the above, we are aiming to create one of these
operating systems, except it leverages all the existing nixOS
infrastructure, while also adding in some more modern tooling, and
custom tooling of our own.

We will also allow configurations to be synced between devices by the
use of `git`.

For managing nixOS generations, as well as the user's changes,
we present upcoming changes in a "queue", 
showing all changes done since the last rebuild.

The mechanism for adding things to the nixOS configuration without
manually writing it out into a file is still being investigated. We
are leaning towards a CLI that takes expresions like
`services.sharkey.enable true` that then spits out a
`services/sharkey/sharkey.nix` with contents:

```nix
{
    services.sharkey = {
        enable = true;
    }
}
```

From there, changing any settings would be `cli services.sharkey.port
= 8080` which would edit the file such that it spits out:

```nix
{
    service.sharkey = {
        enable = true;
        port = 8080;
    }
}
```

> NOTE: I have not actually checked those are valid settings, they are
> just an example.

### Non-Commercial

Unlike other projects, we are aiming to be non-commercial. The OS
won't ever cost a dime, we won't add features that cost money to use
nor will we paywall any existing features.

You are of course free to [support
us](https://liberapay.com/Starlight-Network) but this does not in any
way alter the experience of using this OS.

## Goals and non-goals

We want to create something that has all the power of nix under the
hood, while offering usability and user-friendliness akin to other
projects in this space. At the same time, we want to leave the user
with a fully working nixOS configuration that doesn't require our
tooling to continue functioning.

We do not want to create a commercial product, and we do not aim to be
the most comprehensive GUI tooling on earth either.

## Opinionated

We make some opinionated changes for the base operating system, like
for example:
- [Fish](https://fishshell.com) as the default shell.
- Make use of systemd *heavily*, basically as much as we can. We want
  a lot of this tooling to be centralized there, as to make it easier
  to work with.
- Ship [nixos-cli](https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-cli) instead
  of the traditional `nixos-install` and co.

## Project Status

The project is currently in its early stages. We are figuring out the
structure we want to use, writing a basic installation script, and
planning how the CLI and GUI will work.

If you want to contribute, here are some things we are going to work
on soon, that we would accept contributions on:

- CLI (probably written in `go`)
- flake structure for installed OS
    - i.e how we want to organize the flake into i.e hosts, services
      and so on.
- Naming for this project (see issues tab)

## License

Our code is licensed under the 
[Opinionated Queer License v1.3](https://oql.avris.it/license/v1.3.md?c=Starlight%20Network%7Chttps%3A%2F%2Fstarlightnet.work)

This license only applies to our own code, not external dependencies.
Check licenses accordingly.