termux-nix: an Android X11 desktop configured with nix.

Lately, I’ve been having fun with termux and termux-x11. Carrying a laptop all the time is a hassle, and I have always wanted to build a cyberdeck. But SoC-based devices often have hardware quality issues, so I ended up with termux / termux-x11 on Android.

I worked outside with this setup for more than 30 minutes, and I’m quite happy with the result. I tried nix-on-droid, but chose native termux because of the proot overhead. So I made a project called termux-nix:

• builds nix derivations outside Android, because building inside proot crashes randomly
• rsyncs the result to termux and runs scripts, similar to home-manager
• runs nix applications inside a proot container that shares /tmp, storage, etc. with termux

“Happy Hacking!”