Usage

This guide assumes familiarity with Nix and NixOS. New users should first read the documentation in Related Links.

Flakes and Nix Channels

Many critical changes in loongson-community/nixpkgs ’s loong-master branch await upstreaming, including loongarch64-linux support for Flakes. We recommend:

Flakes: Use github:loongson-community/nixpkgs for Nixpkgs.
Nix Channels: Use https://download.nix4loong.cn/nix-channels/loong-master.

Our Nix installer and NixOS images come pre-configured with these settings.

Binary Cache

A binary cache stores and distributes pre-built packages in the Nix ecosystem. Instead of compiling locally, Nix downloads pre-built packages from binary caches, dramatically improving installation speed and saving compute resources. Each cache is cryptographically signed for security and integrity.

Nix’s official build services (like https://cache.nixos.org ) only support x86_64 and aarch64 architectures, not LoongArch. We’ve built dedicated build services and binary caches for LoongArch, providing pre-built Nix installers, Nixpkgs packages, and NixOS images.

Our binary cache is at https://cache.nix4loong.cn with public key cache.nix4loong.cn-1:zmkwLihdSUyy6OFSVgvK3br0EaUEczLiJgDfvOmm3pA=. We plan automatic redirection to geographically closest mirrors as more become available. Interested in contributing mirrors? See Contributing.

If you use our provided Nix installer or NixOS installation images, they will automatically use the binary cache above – no additional configuration required. Nix will prioritize downloading pre-built packages when installing software.

Due to current computing and human resource constraints, the binary cache only includes a subset of Nixpkgs packages. You can view the complete list in nixpkgs/flake.nix of Nix4Loong/hydra-jobs .

For desktop environments, currently only GNOME, KDE Plasma 6 and XFCE are pre-built.
For packages not on the list, you can still try building them yourself. Build success rates will gradually improve as the community continues its efforts.
To include more packages, please submit PRs to the above repository. Once merged, they will be automatically built on hydra.nix4loong.cn and pushed to the cache.

Kernel Patches

The Linux mainline kernel has supported the new-world LoongArch architecture since version 5.19. For optimal hardware performance, we recommend keeping your kernel up to date. While kernel maintenance and new platform support for LoongArch are continuously being pushed upstream, some patches have not yet been merged for various reasons. We have collected these patches from the Loongson Hobbyists’ Community and AOSC , and provide the latest kernel with these patches through the nix-loongarch-kernel Flake.

These un-upstreamed patches include but are not limited to:

Motorcomm YT6801 NIC driver
HWMon support for Loongson 3 family processors
PixArt PS/2 touchpad driver
Legacy firmware boot support and AMD GPU stability fixes
Touchpad support for some LoongArch-based laptops

If you use our provided NixOS installation images, they will automatically configure to use the kernel provided by the above Flake. Our binary cache also provides pre-built versions of this kernel, so no local compilation is needed.