Wake me when I don't have to learn a new language to use it or compile anything from source.

If you want immutability with a normal distro, like Ubuntu, use Darch.

https://godarch.com

With a very brief look, it seems like I still have to manually putz with a text configuration format (learning a new language) the same way I would with Nix.

The configuration is a shell script with regular "apt install" commands.

There is a config.json for defining inheritance only.

edit: Here are my recipes: https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch-recipes/tree/master/re...