How I like to install NixOS (declaratively)

For one of my network storage PC builds , I was looking for an alternative to Flatcar Container Linux and tried out NixOS again (after an almost 10 year break). There are many ways to install NixOS, and in this article I will outline how I like to install NixOS on physical hardware or virtual machines: over the network and fully declaratively. Introduction: Declarative? The term declarative means that you describe what should be accomplished, not how. For NixOS, that means you declare what software you want