I am new to nixos too. As for flakes, it is little complicated at least for me. Vimjoyer video helped me understand little about flake. Here the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCeYq72Sko0 You can go through his nixos series. And there another YouTuber librephoenix. He has good learning material too. Here is link https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeZyoDTk0J-UPhd7MUktexw

Try USB tethering from phone. I had similar issue with my first install. Updating drivers helped.

what is proton? what does it do?

Yes I can use it for reading. thank you for the suggestion. I will try instant os.

Not sure. But I have other primary laptop. And this laptop is just sitting so I wanted try something with it.

thank you, I will check it.

I checked this yesterday, but could not decide. So had to ask.

Thank you

Emacs

Launcher and icon pack?