nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/installation/obtaining.xml

<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
         xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
         xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
         version="5.0"
         xml:id="sec-obtaining">

<title>Obtaining NixOS</title>

<para>NixOS ISO images can be downloaded from the <link
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nixos/download.html">NixOS
download page</link>.  There are a number of installation options.  If
you happen to have an optical drive and a spare CD, burning the
image to CD and booting from that is probably the easiest option.
Most people will need to prepare a USB stick to boot from.
<xref linkend="sec-booting-from-usb"/> describes the preferred method
to prepare a USB stick.
A number of alternative methods are presented in the <link
xlink:href="https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_Installation_Guide#Making_the_installation_media">NixOS
Wiki</link>.</para>

<para>As an alternative to installing NixOS yourself, you can get a
running NixOS system through several other means:

<itemizedlist>
  <listitem>
    <para>Using virtual appliances in Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
    that can be imported into VirtualBox.  These are available from
    the <link xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nixos/download.html">NixOS
    download page</link>.</para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
    <para>Using AMIs for Amazon’s EC2.  To find one for your region
    and instance type, please refer to the <link
    xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/virtualisation/ec2-amis.nix">list
    of most recent AMIs</link>.</para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
    <para>Using NixOps, the NixOS-based cloud deployment tool, which
    allows you to provision VirtualBox and EC2 NixOS instances from
    declarative specifications.  Check out the <link
    xlink:href="https://nixos.org/nixops">NixOps homepage</link> for
    details.</para>
  </listitem>
</itemizedlist>

</para>

</chapter>