Please note that these instructions are not offically supported or condoned by Nix and are not guaranteed to always work, but from my testing everything seems to work perfectly fine.

These steps may not be required if NixOS/nix#2374 is resolved.

These commands are required for both Fedora Workstation and Fedora Silverblue

sudo semanage fcontext -a -t etc_t '/nix/store/[^/]+/etc(/.*)?'
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t lib_t '/nix/store/[^/]+/lib(/.*)?'
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t systemd_unit_file_t '/nix/store/[^/]+/lib/systemd/system(/.*)?'
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t man_t '/nix/store/[^/]+/man(/.*)?'
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t bin_t '/nix/store/[^/]+/s?bin(/.*)?'
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t usr_t '/nix/store/[^/]+/share(/.*)?'
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t var_run_t '/nix/var/nix/daemon-socket(/.*)?'
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t usr_t '/nix/var/nix/profiles(/per-user/[^/]+)?/[^/]+'

If you are on Fedora Workstation, skip past the Fedora Silverblue section down to Install Nix

If you are running Fedora Silverblue, you will need to follow these extra steps.

sudo mkdir /var/nix

[Unit]
Description=Enable mount points in / for ostree
DefaultDependencies=no
ConditionPathExists=!%f

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStartPre=chattr -i /
ExecStart=mkdir -p '%f'
ExecStopPost=chattr +i /

[Unit]
Description=Nix Package Manager
[email protected]
[email protected]
Requires=var.mount
Before=nix-daemon.socket

[Mount]
What=/var/nix
Where=/nix
Options=bind
Type=none

[Install]
WantedBy=local-fs.target

Enable and mount the nix mount and reset the SELinux context.

# Ensure systemd picks up the newly created units
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
# Enable the nix mount on boot.
sudo systemctl enable nix.mount
# Mount the nix mount now.
sudo systemctl start nix.mount
# R = recurse, F = full context (not just target)
sudo restorecon -RF /nix

After you have configured SELinux (and if you are on Silverblue, configured a /nix mount), it's time to install Nix.

sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon

If you are running Fedora Workstation, you are now ready to rock! If you are running Fedora Silverblue, you will need to do some additional configuration.

If you are running Fedora Silverblue, you will need to run these additional steps. Most likely the installation errored out while setting up systemd. SELinux on Silverblue prevents systemd from loading the units linked by Nix, while the best solution would be to add a policy or package Nix as an RPM, we will just manually copy the units ourselves.

# Remove the linked services
sudo rm -f /etc/systemd/system/nix-daemon.{service,socket}
# Manually copy the services
sudo cp /var/nix/var/nix/profiles/default/lib/systemd/system/nix-daemon.{service,socket} /etc/systemd/system/
# Ensure systemd picks up the newly created units
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
# Start (and enable) the nix-daemon socket
sudo systemctl enable --now nix-daemon.socket

You have just installed Nix and should be ready to rock!

NOTE: the nix-daemon.socket unit will automatically start nix-daemon.service whenever it is needed, there is no need to enable or manually start the service.