While X11 (see ) is still the primary display technology on NixOS, Wayland support is steadily improving. Where X11 separates the X Server and the window manager, on Wayland those are combined: a Wayland Compositor is like an X11 window manager, but also embeds the Wayland 'Server' functionality. This means it is sufficient to install a Wayland Compositor such as sway without separately enabling a Wayland server: programs.sway.enable = true; This installs the sway compositor along with some essential utilities. Now you can start sway from the TTY console. If you are using a wlroots-based compositor, like sway, and want to be able to share your screen, you might want to activate this option: xdg.portal.wlr.enable = true; and configure Pipewire using and related options.