Indeed. As no less than Ron Swanson rendered unto us - an exemplar in classic American yarn form:
... wise words.
I feel like Nix does have such killer features, but they are different for everyone.
For me it was:
- system management (nixos + nix-darwin. I wish there was something like nix-darwin for non-nixos linux distros, binding daemon systemd units and desktop files into the "hosting" distro)
- on-the-spot running without globally installing for one shot tasks (nix-shell -p iotop --run iotop)
- "just works" project environment (default.nix+shell.nix or flakes)
These are the ones that made me tip over and decide to go from tiptoeing to full tilt
Another benefit is that "traditional" package managers may litter your system with configuration files and post-install scripts (for the software you are installing and all of its dependencies), some of which can persist even after uninstalling the packages.
Nix prevents that by design.
It's fire and forget and I can just focus on what I'm set to do.
Once I'm done with the one shot task, it disappears and could be garbage collected for all I care.
Some tools I did promote to being part of my user env but crossing that bar is a very deliberate thing, some are promoted to systemwide (root) and the bar for that is even higher.
It removes a ton of mental deadweight.
It's in early stages, but it exists now: https://github.com/numtide/system-manager
go outside, talk to friends, do something productive, etc...
Honestly, it’s Home Manager that really adds the maximum value, and getting all the way there takes a full weekend, but what were you gonna do anyway.