I tried Kiro: a 24-hour "cook-and-serve" experiment on AWS (RSS -> Telegram)

I tried Kiro. These days I was in the mood for a “cook-and-serve” project: a minimal AWS soffritto (just enough infrastructure to make it real), a pinch of AI (apparently mandatory in 2025), and no more than ~24 hours (not consecutive) to build something end-to-end inside Kiro. After the last event I organized, I got an idea: a Telegram bot that, every day, publishes into a dedicated channel the items from a list of RSS feeds-only those from the last 24 hours—then translates and summarizes them in Italian. ...

January 4, 2026 · Ugo Palumbo

Migrating to NixOS as my daily driver

For a few months I couldn’t find the time (or the energy) to keep working on my plan to migrate to NixOS as my primary OS for personal use but, because there’s always a “but”, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this, over the last two months I finally made the jump. And it turned out to be far less painful than I expected, both on the operating system side and on the desktop stack (display manager / window manager). If you’ve never tried it, I strongly recommend giving a tiling window manager a fair shot: the learning curve is lower than it looks, and the day-to-day productivity gains are immediate once the muscle memory kicks in. ...

December 24, 2025 · Ugo Palumbo

NixOS 25.05 on 25 05 25

On May 23rd, NixOS 25.05 was officially released ( nixos.org/blog/announcements/2025/nixos-2505/), making version 24.11 deprecated. I’ve therefore updated my configuration and the template I published, creating two branches in my repository another_nixos_configurations_template: 24.11 branch containing the working template for version 24.11 25.05 branch where I’ve made the necessary changes to build with version 25.05 and where I’ll continue developing the template The master branch will be aligned with the template for the latest NixOS version, merging from the corresponding branch (so at this moment it’s a merge from the 25.05 branch). ...

May 25, 2025 · Ugo Palumbo

Updating My NixOS Config with Disko

Two months later, I’ve managed to update my NixOS configuration files to incorporate the Disko “tool.” For anyone who missed my previous post: I recently came back to NixOS and spent some time studying and developing my personal configuration files, using the official manual, YouTube videos, and GitHub repos from other users as references. Seeing how useful those examples were inspired me to publish my own. I’ve structured these files to fit my needs, intentionally without using Flakes or Home Manager, to keep everything as simple as possible. Then I shared them as a “template” in my repo Another NixOS Configurations Template. ...

April 1, 2025 · Ugo Palumbo

Back to Linux with NixOS

Returning to Linux as my daily operating system, I wanted something stable, secure, and easily replicable – allowing me to get a workstation up & running in the shortest time possible from a fresh HDD. I also needed an OS that could handle client machines in a business context, replicating the same environment except for user-specific details. If NixOS came to mind while reading, keep going. I first tried NixOS a couple of years ago, then left it for Fedora due to time constraints. Since late December, I’ve come back to it, focusing on dotfiles and configuration. I consulted the official manual, watched some YouTube videos, and examined various GitHub repos from other users – their examples inspired me to publish my own approach. ...

January 31, 2025 · Ugo Palumbo