Use a 4GB (or bigger) USB stick and format it to FAT32 with a program like fdisk
or GParted.
Download the latest NixOS Graphical ISO image from the official website.
Take note of the device name of your USB stick.
sudo fdisk -l
Let's say the device name is /dev/sda
and that the ISO you have downloaded is called nixos-gnome-24.05.1634.938aa157bbd6-x86_64-linux.iso
. You can now create a bootable USB stick with ddrescue
.
sudo ddrescue nixos-gnome-24.05.1634.938aa157bbd6-x86_64-linux.iso /dev/sda --force -D
Insert the USB stick into your laptop, keep pressing F12 until you see a boot menu, select the option that boots your system from the USB stick.