NixOS on a ThinkPad X1 Carbon

Stickers on the lid so far. I’m leaving room to add more.Since installing NixOS on a little Minisforum PC, I’ve been a full-time NixOS user at home (I use a MacBook Pro at work). I’m going to be finishing work next Autumn, so I will probably put some form of Linux on the MacBook at that point. However, as it is an Apple Silicon machine and it has a T-whatever-it-is security chip in it, my options may be practically limited to installing Asahi Linux rather than NixOS. I may also dual-boot with macOS for a while to keep a foot in that camp and maintain compatibility with iOS, if I am still using an iPhone then. Asahi is a heroic project, given the hurdles of trying to reverse engineer some very proprietary and locked-down hardware, but there is a limit to what they can do in terms of compatibility. I decided to buy a used PC laptop to install NixOS on, and settled on a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 9). I’ll explain why I chose this model, how the installation went, and the upgrades I…