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I made a dual-bootable NixBSD (NixOS and FreeBSD) image

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I've been working on getting NixBSD (Nix package manager + FreeBSD) to boot alongside NixOS on a shared ZFS pool. The result is a <2GB disk image you can try in QEMU or virt-manager.What works: - GRUB chainloads FreeBSD's bootloader - Both systems share a ZFS pool - Everything is defined in a single Nix flake - Fully reproducible builds (some dependencies are now cached on Cachix) Planned: - Support native compilation of NixBSD (currently cross-compiled on Linux) - Many shortcuts were taken to get this working, needs lots of cleanup - Add a semi-automated installer like nixos-wizard Try it: qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 \ -bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd \ -drive file=nixos.root.img,format=raw Login: nixos/nixos or root/toorThe hardest parts were getting mounts working at boot, making the bootloader setup idempotent, and debugging early init. This disk image could potentially work on a USB stick with a bit more work.This is very much experimental. My goal is to eventually produce a proper NixBSD installation ISO and consolidate all configuration into one repository while still consuming upstream NixBSD as a flake.Download: https://github.com/jonhermansen/nixbsd-demo/releases/tag/bui...Feel free to leave feedback here or on GitHub! Thanks!

HN · launched Jan 29, 2026 · 9 upvotes (top 54%) · 0 views

Niche: experimental and embedded operating systems · 142 launches, 6 in the last 7 days ▼ -60% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags

  • Horizontal
  • Dev tools
  • Developer
  • Not AI
  • Hobby / open-source project

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

Could you build this?

No Creating a bootable disk image with NixOS and FreeBSD sharing a ZFS pool requires specialized operating system, bootloader, and filesystem engineering.

What it would actually take: Requires deep understanding of FreeBSD kernel bootloaders, GRUB chainloading, and ZFS on Linux (ZoL) vs FreeBSD OpenZFS feature flag compatibility. The builder must write custom Nix derivations that bootstrap FreeBSD userland alongside NixOS system configurations and construct raw partition tables. This demands deep OS kernel, filesystem, and systems software domain expertise.

Discussion

2 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Cygwin, ReactOS

Concerns raised: OpenBSD NixOS support is bitrotted

Feature requests: NetBSD ZFS boot support, Cygwin support, ReactOS NixOS-ification

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 396 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #220 of 397 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 82 days after the earliest competitor.

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