Installing Drupal on an all-Nginx server - OOB or should you customize / replace any file?
Nginx doesn't support .htaccess files without an extension. You could install that extension, but most don't.

Drupal doesn't include sample rewrite config for Nginx, so there are a few extra steps when setting up the vhost, but nothing major. You'll also need to make sure FPM is set up and configured correctly, but that goes without saying when using PHP with nginx.

There's a pretty sensible looking sample config on the Nginx site itself:

server {
    server_name example.com;
    root /var/www/drupal8; ## &lt;-- Your only path reference.

    location = /favicon.ico {
        log_not_found off;
        access_log off;
    }

    location = /robots.txt {
        allow all;
        log_not_found off;
        access_log off;
    }

    # Very rarely should these ever be accessed outside of your lan
    location ~* \.(txt|log)$ {
        allow 192.168.0.0/16;
        deny all;
    }

    location ~ \..*/.*\.php$ {
        return 403;
    }

    location ~ ^/sites/.*/private/ {
        return 403;
    }

    # Allow "Well-Known URIs" as per RFC 5785
    location ~* ^/.well-known/ {
        allow all;
    }

    # Block access to "hidden" files and directories whose names begin with a
    # period. This includes directories used by version control systems such
    # as Subversion or Git to store control files.
    location ~ (^|/)\. {
        return 403;
    }

    location / {
        # try_files $uri @rewrite; # For Drupal &lt;= 6
        try_files $uri /index.php?$query_string; # For Drupal &gt;= 7
    }

    location @rewrite {
        rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1;
    }

    # Don't allow direct access to PHP files in the vendor directory.
    location ~ /vendor/.*\.php$ {
        deny all;
        return 404;
    }

    # In Drupal 8, we must also match new paths where the '.php' appears in
    # the middle, such as update.php/selection. The rule we use is strict,
    # and only allows this pattern with the update.php front controller.
    # This allows legacy path aliases in the form of
    # blog/index.php/legacy-path to continue to route to Drupal nodes. If
    # you do not have any paths like that, then you might prefer to use a
    # laxer rule, such as:
    #   location ~ \.php(/|$) {
    # The laxer rule will continue to work if Drupal uses this new URL
    # pattern with front controllers other than update.php in a future
    # release.
    location ~ '\.php$|^/update.php' {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(|/.*)$;
        # Security note: If you're running a version of PHP older than the
        # latest 5.3, you should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini.
        # See http://serverfault.com/q/627903/94922 for details.
        include fastcgi_params;
        # Block httpoxy attacks. See https://httpoxy.org/.
        fastcgi_param HTTP_PROXY "";
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
        fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
        # PHP 5 socket location.
        #fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        # PHP 7 socket location.
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
    }

    # Fighting with Styles? This little gem is amazing.
    # location ~ ^/sites/.*/files/imagecache/ { # For Drupal &lt;= 6
    location ~ ^/sites/.*/files/styles/ { # For Drupal &gt;= 7
        try_files $uri @rewrite;
    }

    # Handle private files through Drupal.
    location ~ ^/system/files/ { # For Drupal &gt;= 7
        try_files $uri /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ {
        expires max;
        log_not_found off;
    }
}