Seconded. I have been using nixos for a few years. I don't use it for everything, but I like it for dev. It was weird at first, and there were one or two early blocking problems I had to solve before I could do work. Like how do I set gpg pin-entry, but I forget stuff like that and have to search for it on any platform. At least on nixos is all written down somewhere even if I'm too lazy to take notes.

The installer is super easy to use; full disk encryption is baked in if you want it, the default desktop is fine, and the overwhelming majority of my config is just the apps I want installed by default.

I love this because it makes my desktop or laptop totally commodified: if I break my laptop I can get another one out of the closet and:

-- install nixos in 10 minutes

-- copy a couple of stanzas out of my nix config file into the new system one

-- untar a backup /home/user

-- `nix rebuild switch`

-- drink a beer

No installing a bunch of dev environment stuff. No greping internet for 'gpg pin-entry' or 'how to install docker' because I had to write that into a config in the first place. Basically I like nixos because I'm a lazy fucker and it makes me front end load the work so I only have to do it once.

Also, these days if I have trouble writing a nix thing I can usually just vibecode my way out of the problem. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯