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Profiles

Profiles are composable mixins that you combine as needed. The core profile is always included automatically. Specify multiple profiles with commas:

just create myvm docker,python           # Docker + Python
just create devbox docker,podman,dev     # Full dev environment
just create claude-vm claude,dev,docker  # Claude Code with dev tools

Available Profiles

Profile Description
core SSH server, admin/user accounts, firewall (always included)
docker Docker daemon (both users have docker access)
podman Podman + distrobox, buildah, skopeo (rootless containers)
nvidia NVIDIA drivers + container toolkit (requires docker)
python Python with uv package manager and build tools
rust Rust toolchain from Nix packages
dev Development tools (neovim, tmux, etc.)
home-manager Home-manager with sway-home modules (emacs, shell config, etc.)
claude Claude Code CLI (Anthropic's AI coding assistant)
open-code Open Code CLI (open-source AI coding assistant)
moonshine-nvidia Moonshine headless game-streaming server. Requires pipewire + a Proxmox VM with NVIDIA GPU passthrough (see PROXMOX.md). Mutually exclusive with sunshine-plasma-nvidia.
sunshine-plasma-nvidia Sunshine desktop-streaming server bundled with KDE Plasma 6 Wayland (SDDM autologin), Flatpak, and the Bazaar app store. For streaming a full KDE desktop rather than individual games. Requires pipewire + a Proxmox VM with NVIDIA GPU passthrough. Mutually exclusive with moonshine-nvidia. First-boot Flatpak install runs in the background; Bazaar appears in the menu after a few minutes.

Tip for agentic use: Consider enabling semi-mutable mode for claude or open-code VMs (echo "semi" > machines/<name>/mutable). This gives a writable /nix overlay so that software can be installed on the fly with nix profile install, and nix-based projects can build and evaluate flakes — all while keeping the root filesystem immutable and host-upgradeable.

Common Combinations

Use Case Profiles
Docker server docker
Development VM docker,podman,dev
Full dev environment docker,podman,dev,home-manager
Python development docker,python
Claude Code (full) claude,dev,docker,podman,home-manager
Claude with GPU claude,dev,docker,nvidia
Open Code (full) open-code,dev,docker,podman,home-manager

Zram Compressed Swap

Zram creates a compressed swap device in RAM, allowing the system to handle memory pressure by compressing inactive pages rather than killing processes (OOM). This is useful for development workloads that may have unpredictable memory spikes.

Enabled by default in: dev, claude, open-code

Configuration Options

Option Default Description
vm.zram.enable false Enable zram compressed swap
vm.zram.memoryPercent 100 Percentage of RAM to use for zram (e.g., 50 = half of RAM)
vm.zram.algorithm zstd Compression algorithm (zstd, lz4, lzo)

When enabled, swappiness is set to 100 to prefer compressing memory over OOM killing.

Enabling in a Custom Profile

To enable zram in your own profile, add to your profile's nix file:

{
  vm.zram.enable = true;
  vm.zram.memoryPercent = 50;  # Use half of RAM for compressed swap
}

Effective Memory

Zram compresses inactive pages and stores them in RAM as swap. This lets the system handle more memory pressure before OOM killing. Compression ratios vary by workload (typically 2:1 to 4:1).

With a 4GB VM and an assumed 3:1 compression ratio:

memoryPercent Zram Swap Size Effective Capacity
50 2GB ~5.3GB
75 3GB ~6GB
100 4GB ~6.7GB

The zram device itself lives in RAM, so higher values trade active memory for more compressed swap capacity.