[rgoulter]

"nix is useful for getting the same version of programs on different computers". This is obviously useful to have.

Say for the use-case of "I have a macOS laptop, and I use Arch Linux on a different computer". I can't genuinely recommend nixpkgs as better than just running "brew install..." and "pacman -S" (and whatever AUR tool is in vogue). -- Yes, once you know what you're doing and have a configuration, nixpkgs is nicer. But it's not as if the good-enough alternatives are too hard.

When there are more hurdles to getting the bleeding edge (like on Amazon Linux or whatever), I appreciate how much easier it is to just "install nix, install my packages". But even then, installing a recent version of tmux or fish or whatever is a quick search and a few commands away. (Which isn't that much if you only have to do it once every few months; and/or note how to do it in some script or markdown notes).

[lilyball]

I don't understand the "I have a macOS laptop, and I use Arch Linux on a different computer" claim. If anything that's an even better time to use Nix, because it means I only need to know one package manager instead of two. The setup I currently use on macOS could be dropped onto a Linux machine and I expect it would work with zero changes there, or I could switch over to home-manager (probably a good idea, I just haven't done it for historical reasons). And if I don't have a setup yet I could just use `nix-env -iA nixpkgs.pkgname` to install stuff the way people usually get started with Nix.