> Overall, I'm also very conflicted about NixOS. I liked the promises, but in practice, it falls short for me.

for me, I've learnt to live with the limitations - anything I can't get to run on nixos I just won't bother with. anything that does run will probably run forever.

in a way it's similar to switching to a completely different OS - the benefits (e.g. stability, enormous package repo and documentation, etc) far outweigh the issues. I couldn't live with systems that can be broken anymore. well I do on a server, but that's more of a toy than something that needs to be reliable.