And you can get it on every distribution! You can install Nix on virtually all Linux distributions (IIRC Fedora Silverblue is the exception due to read-only /) and macOS.

Of course, you will lose some benefits, such as the NixOS module system. But set up Nix and you have access to packages in nixpkgs and nix-shell (basically virtual environments with any package). Add home-manager and you can set up your user environment declaratively.

You can use follow this to use Nix in Silverblue https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nix_Installation_Guide#Installing_wi...

NixOS is available, not sure what other distros offer that it doesn't.

An easy, relatively worry free installation/out of the box experience? The option to install uncommon software in a way that may be crappy but would work (make install?)?

That's what's holding me back, although I'm fascinated by the concept.

I would say the installation experience might be a bit more involved, but once it's installed it's much more worry-free for me. On every other distribution I've used (including Ubuntu and co), it's very easy to break the system completely. On Nix, it's almost impossible because you can always boot directly into the state before your update. Once you've set up your configuration, you can install it instantly on other machines by copying one file. On other distributions, you would have to re-install and configure everything by hand. Many of the tweaks for which you usually have to read Arch Wiki are also built into Nix, so you just have to write services.myService.myOption = foo; and you're done.

For the second point, if you've got a package that just builds with the usual ./configure, make, make install, here is all you need to get a nix package for it:

  { stdenv }:
  stdenv.mkDerivation {
    name = "my-package";
    src = ./.;
    buildInputs = [ ... whatever dependencies you need ...];
  }

And the standard build commands will be run automatically. The only thing that's kind of annoying is installing binary distributions of packages since they need to be patched to work on Nix, but it's not the end of the world. Also, nixpkgs is so universal that I very rarely find myself having to add a package that's not in it.

Thanks!

> The only thing that's kind of annoying is installing binary distributions of packages since they need to be patched

This worries me, as every once in a while I do feel like using some proprietary app. What does it even mean more precisely? What about Steam games and such? Would it make sense to run them in a container or something like that?

I suppose I like to use unpopular software in general. How would I use (make a package or otherwise install) the odd go, python, js, nim, rust ... project that is made with its own weird build system? If I made a package for it I could very comfortably make changes to the code and directly recompile/reinstall, right?

For Steam, NixOS actually builds a full FHS with all the packages from SteamOS and then runs Steam within that using a simple chroot. It works surprisingly well and can also be used for stubborn software that cannot work without FHS and without messing up the rest of your system.

Me neither.

But I see some heavy Slack, Arch and Void proponents.