Thanks for sharing your experience in more detail.

I think Nixpkgs is easier to package for than a lot of ecosystems/distributions, but the obligation of _having_ to package for the distro in order to get things working in an ideal way is (reasonably!) more than many people want to have to deal with. (There is also a gap, kinda like across the built-in vs. have-to-package barrier, inside the Nixpkgs world, between software with reasonable/standard build systems and software with unique or ill-designed build processes.)

I've been daydreaming about how this could be better for a little while now, and wondering what compromises it will require to the ‘purity’ of the system, how worthwhile they'll be for novice and advanced users, etc.