To provide another data point: I too use NixOS and oh boy that one-time is really costly. And while we're sharing Nix stuff for LLMs there's this piece of kit too: https://github.com/YPares/rigup.nix

Agreed, the learning curve is insane and docs are sparse. But it is truly worth it imo, even if you’re just using Nix as a build tool, or using Home Manager on Linux or macOS.