How can I boot NixOS? Let me count the ways...
NixOS is an operating system based on the Nix package manager and Linux. Linux is an operating system kernel, which means it runs on hardware and mediates access to this hardware by the user space – providing abstractions to allow applications and services to care less about what exact hardware they’re running on, and allocating resources to allow multiple processes to run at once.
I’m going to talk about how we get from a bootloader to a running operating system, then compare how “traditional” Linux distros and NixOS fit the pieces together, and then showcase some of the possibilities that NixOS puts within easy reach.
Source: How can I boot NixOS? Let me count the ways..., an article by Linus Heckemann.